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JL. W 







T KE Bg^T COR^ElVY ^TAKjpVVtCD LirEf^ TUR^ 


Vol. T, No. 383. May 9J, 18S4. Annual Subscription, $91.00, 


English Men of Letters, Edited by John Morley. 

— 


LIFE 


GIBBON 


J. C. MORISON 


Entered »t the Poet Office, N. Y., as second-class matter. 
Copjrrlfht, le63, by John W. Lovkll Co. 


NEW YORK; 


+ TO t\N - W • L, OV£ L, L • Co^PAHY-h 

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I /IT ATU TJTVmWa fn f thie i/Alnma Mn h a rthfainAsi from snu KaaItcdIIop nr nnuye/4o^lar nrirp 



















































LOVELL’S LIBRARY-CATALOGUE. 


1. Hyperion.20 

2. Outre-Mer.20 

3. The Happy Boy.10 

4. Arne... 10 

5. Frankenstein..10 

6. TheLast of theMohicans.20 

7. Clyde. .20 

8. The Moonstone, Part 1 .10 

9. The Moonstone, Part II. 10 

10. Oliver Twist............20 

it. The Coming Race.10 

12. Leila.10 

13. The Three Spaniards.. .20 

14. The Tricks of the Greeks.20 

15. L’Abb 4 Constantin.20 

16. Freckles.20 

17. The Dark Colleen.20 

18. They were Married .... 10 

19. Seekers After God.20 

20. The Spanish Nun.10 

21. Green Mountain Boys..20 

22. Fleurette.20 

23. Second Thoughts.20 

24. The New Magdalen .... 20 

25. Divorce.20 

26. Life of Washington.20 

27. Social Etiquette.15 

28. Single Heart, Double 

Face.. 

29. Irene; or, The Lonely 

Manor..20 

30. Vice Versa.20 

31. Ernest Maltravers.20 

32. The Haunted House... 10 

33. John Halifax.20 

34. 800 Leagues on the 

Amazon.10 

35. The Cryptogram.10 

36. Life of Marion.20 

37. Paul and Virginia.10 

38. A Tale of Two Cities.... 20 

39. The Hermits.20 

40. An Adventure in Thule, 

etc.. 

41. A Marriage in High Life2o 

42. Robin. 20 

43. Two on a Tower.20 

44. Rasselas.. 

45. Alice; a sequel to Er¬ 

nest Maltravers.20 

46. Duke of Kandos.20 

47. Baron Munchausen.. 

48. A Princess of Thule-20 

49. The Secret Despatch... .20 

50. Early Days of Christian¬ 
ity, 2 Parts, each.. 

51. Vicar of Wakefield.10 

52. Progress and Poverty...20 

53. The Spy. 20 

54. East Lynne.20 

55. A Strange Story.20 

56. Adam Bede, Part I.15 

Adam Bede, Part 11 .... 15 

57. The Golden Shaft.... . .20 

58. Portia.. 

59. Last Days of Pompeii.. .20 

60. The Two Duchesses... .20 

61. TomBrown’sSchoolDays.20 

62. Wooing O’t, 2 Pts. each.15 

63. The Vendetta.20 

64. Hypatia, Part 1 .15 

Hypatia, Part II.15 


65. Selma.••••15 

66. Margaret and her Brides¬ 
maids.20 

67. Horse Shoe Robinson, 

2 Parts, each.15 

68. Gulliver’s Travels.20 

69. Amos Barton.10 

70. The Berber.20 

71. Silas Marner.10 

72. Queen of the County ...20 

73. Life of Cromwell.15 

74. Jane Eyre.....20 

75. Child’sHist’ry of EngPd.20 

76. Moily Bawn.20 

77. Pillone..15 

78. Phyllis...20 

79. Romola, Part 1 .15 

Romola, Part II.15 

80. Science in ShortChapters. 20 

81. Zanom.20 

82. A Daughter of Heth.... 20 

83. Right and Wrong Uses of 

the Bible.20 

84. Night and Morning,Pt. 1 .15 
NightandMorningjPt.II 15 

85. Shandon Bells.20 

86. Monica..-. ..10 

87. Heart and Science.20 

88. The Golden Calf... 20 

89. The Dean’s Daughter.. .20 

90. Mrs. Geoffrey.20 

91. Pickwick Papers, Part I.20 
Pickwick Papers,Part II.20 

92. Airy, Fairy Lilian.20 

93. Macleod of Dare.20 

94. Tempest Tossed, Part I.20 
Tempest Tossed, P’t II.20 

95. Letters from High Lat¬ 

itudes. 20 

96. Gideon Fleyce.20 

97. India and Ceylon.20 

98. The Gypsy Queen.20 

99. The Admiral’s Ward-20 

100. Nimport, 2 Parts, each.. 15 

101. Harry Holbrooke. .20 

102. Tritons, 2 Parts, each .. 15 

103. Let Nothing You Dismay. 10 

104. Lady Audley’s Secret... 20 

105. Woman’s Place To-day.20 

106. Dunallan, 2 parts, each. 15 

107. Housekeeping and Home 

making.15 

108. No New Thing..20 

109. TheSpoopendykePapers.20 

no. False Hopes.15 

hi. Labor and Capital.20 

112. Wanda, 2 parts, each ... 15 

113. More Words about Bible. 20 

114. Monsieur Lecocq, P’t. I.20 
Monsieur Lecocq, Pt. 11 .20 

115. An Outline of Irish Hist. 10 

116. The Lerouge Case.20 

117. Paul Clifford.20 

118. A New Lease of Life.. .20 

119. Bourbon Lilies.20 

120. Other People’s Money..20 

121. Lady of Lyons.10 

122. Ameline de Bourg.15 

123. A Sea Queen.20 

124. The Ladies Lindores. ..20 

125. Haunted Hearts.10 

126. Loys, Lord Bere&ford...ao 


127, Under Two Flags, Pt I. 20 
Under Two Flags, Pt II.20 

28. Money. 10 

29. In Peril of His Life.20 

30. India; What can it teach 

us?.. 

31. Jets and Flashes.20 

32. Moonshine and Margue¬ 
rites... . .10 

33. Mr. Scarborough's 
Family, 2 Parts, each .. 15 

34. Arden.15 

35. Tower of Percemont.. ..20 

36. Yolande. 20 

37. Cruel London.. 

38. The Gilded Clique.20 

39. Pike County Folks.20 

40. Cricket on the Hearth..ia 

41. Henry Esmond.2a 

42. Strange Adventures of a 

Phaeton.2c 

43. Denis Duval.ia 

44. 01 dCuriosityShop,P’t 1 .15 
01 dCuriosityShop,P’rt II.i; 

45. Ivanhoe, Part I.... .... i « 

Ivanhoe, Part II.. 

46. White Wings.. 

47. The Sketch Book.21 

48. Catherine.. 

49. Janet’s Repentance.i< 

50. Bamaby Rudge, Part I.. 1; 
Barnaby Rudge, Part II. 1 

51. Felix Holt.2< 

52. Richelieu.. 

53. Sunrise, Part I......... 1 

53. Sunrise, Part II.1 

54. Tour of the World in 80 

Days.2< 

55. Mystery of Orcival.2 

56. Lovel, the Widower.... n 

57. Romantic Adventures of 

a Milkmaid.1 

58. DavidCopperfield,Part 1.2 
DavidCopperfield.P’rt II.2 

59. Charlotte Temple.1 

60. Rienzi, 2 Parts, each ... 1 

61. Promise of Marriage.... 1 

62. Faith and Unfaith.3 

63. The Happy Man.. 

64. Barry Lyndon.3 

65. Eyre’s Acquittal. 1 

66. 20,000 Leagues Under the 

Sea.. 

67. Anti-Slavery Days.: 

68. Beauty’s Daughters.....; 

69. Beyond the Sunrise.. 

70. Hard Times.. 

71. Tom Cringle’s Log .... : 

72. Vanity Fair. 

73. Underground Russia_ 

74. Middlemarch,2 Pts. each. 

75. Sir Tom.... ..j 

76. Pelham. 

77. The Story of Ida. 

78. Madcap Violet. 

79. The Little Pilgrim. 

80. Kilmeny. 

81. Whist, or Bumblepuppy?, 

82. That Beautiful Wretch..; 

83. Her Mother’s Sin. 

84. Green Pastures, etc.j 

85. Mysterious Island, Pt I. 










































































































































GIBBON 



BY 

JAMES COTTER MORISON, M.A. 

LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFORD. 




NEW YORK: 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY, 

14 and 16 Vesf.y Street, 






















































2 VI b- 


























































































• ^ A TV" 




CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. 

Pag*. 

gibbon’s early life up to the time of his leaving OXFORD 7 

CHAPTER II. 

AT LAUSANNE.. 

CHAPTER III. 

IN the militia.. 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE ITALIAN JOURNEY. 33 

CHAPTER V. 

LITERARY SCHEMES.—THE HISTORY OF SWITZERLAND. — DISSER¬ 
TATION ON THE SIXTH /ENEID.—FATHER’S DEATH.—SETTLE¬ 
MENT IN LONDON. 39 

CHAPTER VI. 

LIFE IN LONDON.—PARLIAMENT.—THE BOARD OF TRADE.—THE 

DECLINE AND FALL.—MIGRATION TO LAUSANNE.45 









6 


CONTENTS ; 


CHAPTER \ II. 

THE FIRST THREE VOLUMES OF THE DECLINE AND FALL . . 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE LAST TEN YEARS OF HIS LIFE AT LAUSANNE 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE LAST THREE VOLUMES OF THE DECLINE AND FALL . . 


CHAPTER X. 

LAST ILLNESS.—DEATH.—CONCLUSION 



Pi. 

• • Si 


Si 


. . 86 


ioo 







tc 


GIBBON. 


CHAPTER I. 

gibbon’s early life up to the time of his leaving 

OXFORD. 

Edward Gibbon * was born at Putney, near London, on 27th 
April in the year 1737. After the reformation of the calendar his 
birthday became the 8th of May. He was the eldest of a family 
of seven children ; but his five brothers and only sister all died in 
early infancy, and he could remember in after life his sister alone, 
whom he also regretted. 

He is at some pains in his Memoirs to show the length and 
quality of his pedigree, which he traces back to the times of the 
Second and Third Edwards. Noting the fact, we pass on to a 
nearer ancestor, his grandfather, who seems to have been a person 
of considerable energy of character and business talent. He made 
a large fortune, which he lost in the South Sea Scheme, and then 
made another before his death. He was one of the Commission¬ 
ers of Customs, and sat at the Board with the poet Prior; Boling- 
broke was heard to declare that no man knew better than Mr. 
Edward Gibbon the commerce and finances of England. His son, 
the historian’s father, was a person of very inferior stamp. He 
was educated at Westminster and Cambridge, travelled on the 
Continent, sat in Parliament, lived beyond his means as a country 
gentleman, and here his achievements came to an end. He seems 
to have been a kindly but a weak and impulsive man, who however 
had the merit of obtaining and deserving his son’s affection by 
genial sympathy and kindly treatment. 

Gibbon’s childhood was passed in chronic illness, debility, and 
disease. All attempts to give him a regular education were frus¬ 
trated by his precarious health. The longest period he ever passed 
at school were two years at Westminster, but he was constantly 
moved from one school to another. This even his delicacy can 


* Gibbon’s Memoirs and Letters are of such easy access that I have not deemed it ne¬ 
cessary to encumber these pages with reference to them. Any one who wishes to control 
my statements will have no difficulty in doing so with the Miscellaneous Works, edited ">y 
Lord Sheffield, in his hand. Whenever I advance anything that seems to require <*'*'* 
roboration, I have been careful to give my authority. 



8 


GIBBON. 


hardly explain, and it must have been fatal to all sustained study. 
Two facts he mentions of his school life, which paint the manners 
of the age. In the year 1746 such was the strength of party spirit 
that he, a child of nine years of age, “ was reviled and buffeted for 
the sins of his Tory ancestors.” Secondly, the worthy pedagogues 
of that day found no readier way of leading the most studious of 
boys to a love of science than corporal punishment. “ At the ex¬ 
pense of many tears and some blood I purchased the knowledge 
of the Latin syntax.” Whether all love of study would have been 
flogged out of him if he had remained at school, it is difficult to 
say, but it is not an improbable supposition tha,t this would have 
happened. The risk was removed by his complete failure of health. 
“ A strange nervous affection, which alternately contracted his 
legs and produced, without any visible symptom, the most excru¬ 
ciating pain,” was his chief affliction, followed by intervals of languor 
and debility. The saving of his life during these dangerous years 
Gibbon unhesitatingly ascribes to the more than maternal care of 
his aunt, Catherine Porten, on writing whose name for the first 
time in his Memoirs, “he felt a tear of gratitude trickling down his 
cheek.” “If there be any,” he continues, “as I trust there are 
some, who rejoice that I live, to that dear and excellent woman 
they must hold themselves indebted. Many anxious and solitary 
hours and days did she consume in the patient trial of relief and 
amusement; many wakeful nights did she sit by my bedside in 
trembling expectation that every hour would be my last.” Gibbon 
is rather anxious to get over these details, and declares he has no 
wish to expatiate on a “ disgusting topic.” This is quite in the 
style of the ancien regime. There was no blame attached to any 
one for being ill in those days, but people were expected to keep 
their infirmities to themselves. “ People knew how to live and die 
in those days, and kept their infirmities out of sight. You might 
have the gout, but you must walk about all the same without mak¬ 
ing grimaces. It was a point of good breeding to hide one’s 
sufferings.” * Similarly Walpole was much offended by a too 
faithful publication of Madame de Sdvigne’s Lette?'s. “ Heaven 
forbid,” he says, “that I should say that the letters of Madame de 
Sdvignd were bad. I only meant that they were full of family de¬ 
tails and mortal distempers, to which the most immortal of 11s are 
subject.” But Gibbon was above all things a veracious historian, 
and fortunately has not refrained from giving us a truthful picture 
of his childhood. 

Of his studies, or rather his reading—his early and invincible 
love of reading, which he would not exchange for the treasures of 
India—he gives us a full account, and we notice at once the inter- 
esting fact that a considerable portion of the historical field after¬ 
wards occupied by his great work had been already gone over by 
Gibbon before he was well in his teens. “ My indiscriminate ap¬ 
petite subsided by degrees into the historic line, and since philos- 


George Sand, quoted in Taine’s Ancien Regime , p. 181. 



GIBBON. 


9 

ophy has exploded all innate ideas and natural propensities, I must 
ascribe the choice to the assiduous perusal of the Universal 
History as the octavo volumes successively appeared. This un¬ 
equal work referred and introduced me to the Greek and Roman 
historians, to as many at least as were accessible to an English 
reader. All that I could find were greedily devoured, from Little- 
bury’s lame Herodotus to Spelman’s valuable Xenophon , to the 
pompous folios of Gordon’s Tacitus , and a ragged Procopius of 
the beginning of the last century.” Referring to an accident 
which threw the continuation of Echard’s Roman History in his 
way, he says, “To me the reigns of the successors of Constantine 
were absolutely new, and I was immersed in the passage of the Goths 
over the Danube, when the summons of the dinner-bell reluctantly 
draggedmefrom my intellectual feast. . . . I procured the second and 
third volumes of Howell’s History of the World , which exhibit the 
Byzantine period on a larger scale. Mahomet and his Saracens 
soon fixed my attention, and some instinct of criticism directed me 
to the genuine sources. Simon Ockley first opened my eyes, and 
I was led from one book to another till I had ranged round the 
circle of Oriental history. Before I was sixteen I had exhausted 
all that could be learned in English of the Arabs and Persians, the 
Tartars and Turks, and the same ardor led me to guess at the 
French of D’Herbelot and to construe the barbarous Latin of Po- 
cock’s Abiilfa?'agius Here is in rough outline a large portion at 
least of the Decline and Fall already surveyed. The fact shows 
how deep was the sympathy that Gibbon had for his subject, and 
that there was a sort of pre-established harmony between his mind 
and the historical period he afterwards illustrated. 

Up to the age of fourteen it seemed that Gibbon, as he says, 
was destined to remain through life an illiterate cripple. But as he 
approached his sixteenth year, a great change took place in his 
constitution, and his diseases, instead of growing with his growth 
and strengthening with his strength, wonderfully vanished. This 
unexpected recovery was not seized by his father in a rational 
spirit, as affording a welcome opportunity of repairing the defects 
of a hitherto imperfect education. Instead of using the occasion 
thus presented of recovering some of the precious time lost, of lay¬ 
ing a sound foundation of scholarship and learning on which a 
superstructure at the university or elsewhere could be ultimately 
built, he carried the lad off in a moment of perplexity and impa¬ 
tience, and entered him as a gentleman commoner at Magdalen 
College just before he had completed his fifteenth year (1752, 
April 3). This was perhaps the most unwise step he could have 
taken under the circumstances. Gibbon was too young and too 
ignorant to profit by the advantages offered by Oxford to a more 
mature student, and his status as a gentleman commoner seemed 
intended to class him among the idle and dissippated who are only 
expected to waste their money and their time. A good education 
is generally considered as reflecting no small credit on its pos¬ 
sessor; but in the majority of cases it reflects credit on the wise 




IO 


GIBBON. 


solicitude of bis parents or guardians rather than on himself. If 
Gibbon escaped the peril of being an ignorant and frivolous lounger, 
the merit was his own. 

At no period in their history had the English universities suiik 
to a lower condition as places of education than at the time when 
Gibbon went up to Oxford. To speak of them as seats of learning 
seems like irony; they w r ere seats of nothing but coarse living and 
clownish manners, the centres where all the faction, party spirit, 
and bigotry of the country were gathered to a head. In this evil 
pre-eminence both of the universities and all the colleges appear to 
have been upon a level, though Lincoln College, Oxford, is men¬ 
tioned as a bright exception in John Wesley’s day to the prevalent 
degeneracy. The strange thing is that, with all their neglect of 
learning and morality, the colleges were not the resorts of jovial 
if unseemly boon companionship; they were collections of quarrel¬ 
some and spiteful litigants, who spent their time in angry lawsuits. 
The indecent contentions between Bentley and the Fellows of 
Trinity were no isolated scandal. They are best known and re¬ 
membered on account of the eminence of the chief disputants, and 
the melancholy waste of Bentley’s genius which they occasioned. 
Hearne writes of Oxford in 1726, “There are such differences now 
in the University of Oxford (hardly one college but where all the 
members are busied in law business and quarrels not at all relating 
to the promotion of learning), that good letters decay every day, 
insomuch that this ordination on Trinity Sunday at Oxford there 
were no fewer (as I am informed) than fifteen denied orders for in¬ 
sufficiency, which is the more to be noted because our bishops, 
and those employed by them, are themselves illiterate men.” * The 
state of things had not much improved twenty or thirty years later 
when Gibbon went up, but perhaps it had improved a little. He 
does not mention lawsuits as a favourite pastime of the Fellows. 
“ The Fellows or monks of my time,” he says, “ were decent, easy 
men, who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder: their days 
were filled by a series of uniform employments—the chapel, the 
hall, the coffee-house, and the common room—till they retired 
weary and well satisfied to a long slumber. From the toil of read¬ 
ing, writing, or thinking they had absolved their consciences. 
Their conversation stagnated in a round of college business. Tory 
politics, personal anecdotes, and private scandal. Their dull and 
deep potations excused the brisk intemperance of youth, and their 
constitutional toasts were not expressive of the most lively loyalty 
to the House of Hanover.” Some Oxonians perhaps could still 
partly realise the truth of this original picture by their recollections 
of faint and feeble copies of it drawn from their experience in 
youthful days. It seems to be certain that the universities, far 
from setting a model of good living, were really below the average 
of the morals and manners of the age, and the standard was not 
high. Such a satire as the Terrce Filius of Amhurst cannot be 


* Social Life at the English Universities. By Christopher Wordsworth, p. 57. 


GIBBON ,. 


11 

accepted without large deductions ; but the caricaturist is com¬ 
pelled by the conditions of his craft to aim at the true seeming , 
if he neglects the true, and with the benefit of this limitation of 
the Terrce Filius reveals a deplorable and revolting picture of vul¬ 
garity, insolence, and licence. The universities ar» spoken of in 
terms of disparagement by men of all' classes. Lord Chesterfield 
speaks of the “rust” of Cambridge as something of which a pol¬ 
ished man should promptly rid himself. Adam Smith showed his 
sense of the defects of Oxford in a stern section of the Wealth of 
Nations, written twenty years after he had left the place. Even 
youths like Gray and West, fresh from Eton, express themselves 
with contempt for their respective universities. “ Consider me,” 
says the latter, writing from Christ Church, “very seriously, here 
is a strange country, inhabited by things that call themselves Doc¬ 
tors and Masters of Arts, a country flowing with syllogisms and 
ale; where Horace and Virgil are equally unknown.” Gray, an¬ 
swering from Peterhouse, can only do justice to his feelings by 
quoting the words of the Hebrew prophet, and insists that Isaiah 
had Cambridge equally with Babylon in view when he spoke of the 
wild beasts and wild asses, of the satyrs that dance, of an inhabi¬ 
tation of dragons and a court for owls. 

Into such untoward company was Gibbon thrust by his careless 
father at the age of fifteen. That he succumbed to the unwhole¬ 
some atmosphere cannot surprise us. He does not conceal, per¬ 
haps he rather exaggerates, in his Memoirs, the depth of his fall. 
As Bunyan in a state of grace accused himself of dreadful sins 
which in all likelihood he never committed, so it is probable that 
Gibbon, in his old age, when study and learning were the only pas¬ 
sions he knew, reflected too much severity on the boyish freaks 
of his university life. Moreover there appears to have been noth¬ 
ing coarse or unworthy in his dissipation; he was simply idle. 
He justly lays much of the blame on the authorities. To say that 
the discipline was lax would be to pay it an unmerited compliment. 
There was no discipline at all. He lived in Magdalen as he might 
have lived at the Angel or the Mi;re Tavern. He not only left his 
college, but he left the university, whenever he liked. In one win¬ 
ter he made a tour to Bath, another to Buckinghamshire, and he 
made four excursions to London, “without once hearing the voice 
of admonition, without once feeling the hand of control.” Of 
study he had just as much and as little as he pleased. 

“ As soon as my tutor had sounded the insufficiency of his dis¬ 
ciple in school learning, he proposed that we should read every 
morning from ten to eleven the comedies of Terence. During 
the first weeks I constantly attended these lessons in my tutor’s 
room ; but as they appeared equally devoid of profit and pleasure, 
I was once tempted to try the experiment of a formal apology. 
The apology was accepted with a smile. I repeated the offence 
with less ceremony : the excuse was admitted with the same in¬ 
dulgence ; the slightest motive of laziness or indisposition, the 
most trifling avocation at home or abroad was allowed as a worthy 


12 


GIBBON. 


impediment, nor did my tutor appear conscious of my absence or 
neglect.” No wonder he spoke with indignation of such scandal¬ 
ous neglect. “To the University of Oxford,” he says, “I ac¬ 
knowledge no obligation, and she will as readily renounce me for 
a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent four¬ 
teen months at Magdalen College ; they proved the most idle and 
unprofitable of my whole life. The reader will pronounce between 
the school and the scholar.” This is only just and fully merited 
by the abuses denounced. One appreciates the anguish of the 
true scholar mourning over lost time as a miser over lost gold. 
There was another side of the question which naturally did not 
occur to Gibbon, but which may properly occur to us. Did Gibbon 
lose as much as he thought in missing the scholastic drill of the 
regular public school and university man ? Something he un¬ 
doubtedly lost: he was never a finished scholar, up to the stand¬ 
ard even of his own day. If he had been, is it certain that the ac¬ 
complishment would have been all gain ? It may be doubted. At 
a later period Gibbon read the classics with the free and eager 
curiosity of a thoughtful mind. It was a labour of love, of pas¬ 
sionate ardour, similar to the manly zeal of the great scholars of 
the Renaissance. This appetite had not been blunted by enforced 
toil in a prescribed groove. How much of that zest for antiquity, 
of that keen relish for the classic writers which he afterwards ac¬ 
quired and retained through life, might have been quenched if he 
had first made their acquaintance as school-books ? Above all, 
would he have looked on the ancient world with such freedom and 
originality as he afterwards gained, if he had worn through youth 
the harness of academical study? These questions do not suggest 
an answer, but they may furnish a doubt. Oxford and Cambridge 
for nearly a century have been turning out crowds of thorough- 
paced scholars of the orthodox pattern. It is odd that the two 
greatest historians who have been scholars as well—Gibbon and 
Grote—were not university-bred men. 

As if to prove by experiment where the fault lay, in “ the 
school or the scholar,” Gibbon had no sooner left Oxford for the 
long vacation, than his taste for study returned, and, not content 
with reading, he attempted original composition. The subject he 
selected was a curious one for a youth in his sixteenth year. It 
was an attempt to settle the chronology of the age of Sesostris, and 
shows how soon the austere side of history had attracted his at¬ 
tention. “ In my childish balance,” he says, “ I presumed to 
weigh the systems of Scaliger and Petavius, of Marsham and of 
Newton ; and my sleep has been disturbed by the difficulty of 
reconciling the Septuagint with the Hebrew computation.” Of 
course his essay had the usual value of such juvenile productions ; 
that is, none at all, except as an indication of early bias to serious 
study of history. On his return to Oxford, the age of Sesostris 
was wisely relinquished. Pie indeed soon commenced a line of 
study which was destined to have a lasting influence on the re 5 
mainder of his course through life. 


GIBBON. 


13 


He had an inborn taste for theology and the controversies 
which have arisen concerning religious dogma. “ From my child¬ 
hood,” he says, “ 1 had been fond of religious disputation: my 
poor aunt has often been puzzled by the mysteries which she 
strove to believe.” How he carried the taste into mature life, his 
great chapters on the heresies and controversies of the Early 
Church are there to show. This indication for theology, co-exist¬ 
ing with a very different temper towards religious sentiment, re¬ 
calls the similar case of the author of the Historical and Critical 
Dictionary, the illustrious Pierre Bayle, whom Gibbon resembled 
in more ways than one. At Oxford his religious education, like 
everything else connected with culture, had been entirely ne¬ 
glected. It seems hardly credible, yet we have his word for it, 
that he never subscribed or studied the Articles of the Church of 
England, and was never confirmed. When he first went up. he 
was judged to be too young, but the Vice-Chancellor directed him 
to return as soon as lie had completed his fifteenth year, recom¬ 
mending him in the meantime to the instruction of his college. 
“ My college forgot to instruct; I forgot to return, and was myself 
forgotten by the first magistrate of the university. Without a 
single lecture, either public or private, either Christian or Protest¬ 
ant, without any academical subscription, without any episcopal 
ordination, I was left by light of my catechism to grope my way to 
the chapel and communion table, where I was admitted without 
question how far or by what means I might be qualified to receive 
the sacrament. Such almost incredible neglect was productive of 
the worst mischiefs ” What did Gibbon mean by this last sen¬ 
tence ? Did he, when he wrote it, towards the end of his life, re¬ 
gret the want of early religious instruction? Nothing leads us to 
think so, or to suppose that his subsequent loss of faith was a 
heavy grief, supported, but painful to bear. His mind was by 
nature positive, or even pagan, and he had nothing of what the 
Germans call religiositdt in him. Still there is a passage in his 
Memoirs where he oddly enough laments not having selected the fat 
slu7?ibers of the Church as an eligible profession. Did he reflect 
that perhaps the neglect of his religious education at Oxford had 
deprived him of a bishopric or a good deanery, and the learned 
leisure which such positions at that time conferred on those who 
cared for it ? He could not feel that he was morally, or even 
spiritually, unfit for an office filled in his own time by such men as 
Warburton and Hurd. He would not have disgraced the episco¬ 
pal bench; he would have been dignified, courteous, and hospit¬ 
able ; a patron and promoter of learning, we may be sure. His 
literary labours would probably have consisted of an edition of a 
Greek play or two, and certainly some treatise on the Evidences 
of Christianity, But in that case we should not have had the 
Decline and Fall . 

The “blind activity of idleness ” to which he was exposed at 
Oxford, prevented any result of this kind. For want of anything 
better to do, he was led to read Middleton’s Free Enquiry into 


14 


GIBBON. 


the Miraculous Powers which are Supposed to have Subsisted in 
the Christian Church. Gibbon says that the effect of Middleton’s 
“ bold criticism ” upon him was singular, and that instead of mak¬ 
ing him a sceptic, it made him more of a believer. He might have 
reflected that it is the commonest of occurrences for controversial¬ 
ists to produce exactly the opposite result to that which they intend, 
and that as many an apology for Christianity has sown the first 
seeds of infidelity, so an attack upon it might well intensify faith. 
What follows is very curious. “ The elegance of style and freedom 
of argument were repelled by a shield of prejudice. 1 still revered 
the character, or rather the names of the saints and fathers whom 
Dr. Middleton exposes; nor could he destroy my implicit belief 
that the gift of miraculous powers was continued in the Church 
during the first four or five centuries of Christianity. But i was 
unable to resist the weight of historical evidence, that within the 
same period most of the leading doctrines of Popery were already 
introduced in theory and practice. Nor was my conclusion absurd 
that miracles are the test of truth, and that the Church must be or¬ 
thodox and pure which was so often approved by the visible inter¬ 
position of the Deity. The marvellous tales which are boldly at¬ 
tested by the Basils and Chrysostoms, the Austins and Jeromes, 
compelled me to embrace the superior merits of celibacy, the insti¬ 
tution of the monastic life, the use of the sign:'of the cross, of holy 
oil, and even of images, the invocation of saints, the worship of 
relics, the rudiments of purgatory in prayers for the dead, and the 
tremendous mystery of the sacrifice of the body and the blood of 
Christ, which insensibly swelled into the prodigy of transubstanti- 
ation.” In this remarkable passage we have a distinct foreshadow 
of the Tractarian movement, which came seventy or eighty years 
afterwards. Gibbon in 1752, at the age of fifteen, took'up a posi¬ 
tion practically the same as Froude and Newman took up about 
the year 1830. In other words, he reached the famous via media 
at a bound. But a second spring soon carried him clear of it, into 
the bosom of the Church of Rome. 

He had come to what are now called Church principles, by the 
energy of his own mind working on the scantv data furnished him 
by Middleton. By one of those accidents which usually happen in 
such cases, he made the acquaintance of a young gentleman who 
had already embraced Catholicism, and who was well provided with 
controversial tracts in favor of Romanism. Among these were the 
two works of Bossuet, the Exposition of Catholic Doctrine and the 
History of the Protestant Variations. Gibbon says: “I read, I 
applauded, I believed, and surely I fell bv a noble hand. I have 
since examined the originals with a more discerning eye, and shall 
not hesitate to pronounce that Bossuet is indeed a master of all 
the weapons of controversy. In the Exposition , a specious anol- 
opy, the orator assumes with consummate art the tone of candour and 
simplicity, and the ten-horned monster is transformed at his magic 
touch into the milk-white hind, who must be loved as soon as she 
is seen. In the History, 2. bold and well-aimed attack, he displays r 


GIfiBO/V. 


*5 

with a happy mixture of narrative and argument, the faults and 
follies, the changes and contradictions of our first Reformers, 
whose variations, as he dexterously contends, are the mark of his¬ 
torical error, while the perpetual unity of the Catholic Church is 
the sign and test of infallible truth. To my present feelings it 
seems incredible that 1 should ever believe that I believed in tran- 
substantiation. But my conqueror oppressed me with the sacra¬ 
mental words, ‘ Hoc est corpus meuin ,’ and dashed against each 
other the figurative half meanings of the Protestant sects; every 
objection was resolved into omnipotence, and. after repeating at St. 
Mary’s the Athanasian Creed, I humbly acquiesced in the mystery 
of the Real Presence.” 

Many reflections are suggested on the respective domains of 
reason and faith by these words, but they cannot be enlarged on 
here. No one, nowadays, one may hope, would think of making 
Gibbon’s conversion a subject of reproach to him. The danger is 
rather that it should be regarded with too much honor. It un¬ 
questionably shows the early and trenchant force of his intellect: 
he mastered the logical position in a moment; saw the necessity of 
a criterion of faith ; and being told that it was to be found in the 
practice of antiquity, boldly went there, and abided by the result. 
But this praise to his head does not extend to his heart. A more 
tender and deep moral nature would not have moved so rapidly. 
We must in fairness remember that it was not his fault that his re¬ 
ligious education had been neglected at home, at school, and at 
colleo-e. But we have no reason to think that had it been attended 
to, the result would have been much otherwise. The root of spir¬ 
itual life did not exist in him. It never withered, because it never 
shot up. Thus when he applied his acute mind to a religious prob¬ 
lem he contemplated it with the coolness and impariality of a 
geometer or chess player, his intellect operated in vacuo so to 
speak, untrammelled by any bias of sentiment or early training 
He had no profound associations to tear out of his heart. He 
merely altered the premises of a syllogism. \V hen Catholicism 
was presented to him in a logical form, it met with no inward bar 
and repugnance. The house was empty and ready for a new guest, 
or rather the first guest. If Gibbon anticipated the Tractarian 
movement intellectually, he was farther removed than the poles 
are asunder from the mystic reverent spirit which inspired that 
movement. If we read the Apologia of Dr. New ^ a "> " e 
the likeness and unlikeness of the two cases. As a matter of 
S Lie conscience,” savs the latter, “ 1 felt it to be a duty to pro- 
test against the Church of Rome.” At the time he refers to Dr. 
Newman was a Catholic to a degree Gibbon never dreamed of. 
But in the one case conscience and heart-ties strong as life, 
stronger almost than death,” arrested the conclusions of the 
intellect. Ground which Gibbon dashed over in a few months or 
weeks, the great Tractarian took ten years to traverse. So differ 
ent is the mvstic from the positive mind. , 

Gibbon had no sooner settled his new religion than he resolved 


i6 


GIBBON. 


with a frankness which did him all honor to profess it publicly. 
He wrote to his father, announcing his conversion, a letter which 
he afterwards described, when his sentiments had undergone a 
complete change, as written with all the pomp, dignity, and self- 
satisfaction of a martyr. A momentary glow of enthusiasm had 
raised him, as he said, above all worldly considerations. . He had 
no difficulty, in an excursion to London, in finding a priest, who 
perceived in the first interview that persuasion was needless. 
“ After sounding the motives and merits of my conversion, he 
consented to admit me into the pale of the Church, and at his feet 
on the 8th of June 1753, I solemnly, though privately, abjured the 
errors of heresy.” He was exactly fifteen years and one month 
old. Further details, which one would like to have, he does not 
give. The scene even of the solemn act is not mentioned, nor 
whether he was baptized again; but this may be taken for granted. 

The fact of any one “ going over to Rome ” is too common an 
occurrence nowadays to attract notice. But in the eighteenth 
century it was a rare and startling phenomenon. Gibbon’s father, 
who was “ neither a bigot nor a philosopher,” was shocked and 
astonished by his “ son’s strange departure from the religion of his 
country.” He divulged the secret of young Gibbon’s conversion, 
and “ the gates of Magdalen College were for ever shut ” against 
the latter’s return. They really needed no shutting at all. By the 
fact of his conversion to Romanism he had ceased to be a member 
of the University. 


GIBBON. 


*7 


CHAPTER II. 

AT LAUSANNE. 

The elder Gibbon showed a decision of character and prompt 
energy in dealing with his son’s conversion to Romanism, which 
were by no means habitual with him. He swiftly determined to 
send him out of the country, far away from the influences and 
connections which had done such harm. Lausanne in Switzerland 
was the place selected for his exile, in which it was resolved he 
should spend some years in wholesome reflections on the error he 
had committed in yielding to the fascinations of Roman Catholic 
polemics. No time was lost : Gibbon had been received into the 
Church on the 8th of June, 1753, and on die 30th of the same 
month he had reached his destination. He was placed under the 
care of a M. Pavillard, a Calvinist minister, who had two duties 
laid upon him, a general one, to superintend the young man’s 
studies, a particular and more urgent one, to bring him back to the 
Protestant faith. 

It was a severe trial which Gibbon had now to undergo. He 
was by nature shy and retiring; he was ignorant of French; he 
was very young; and with these disadvantages he was thrown 
among entire strangers alone. After the excitement and novelty 
of foreign travel were over, and he could realise his position, he 
felt his heart sink within him. From the luxury and freedom of 
Oxford he was degraded to the dependence of a school-boy. Pa¬ 
villard managed his expenses, and his supply of pocket-money was 
reduced to a small monthly allowance. “ I had exchanged,” he 
says, “ my elegant apartment in Magdalen College for a narrow 
gloomy street, the most unfrequented in an unhandsome town, for 
an old inconvenient house, and for a small chamber ill contrived 
and ill furnished, which on the approach of winter, instead of a 
companionable fire, must be warmed by the dull and invisible heat 
d[ a stove.” Under these gloomy auspices he began the most prof¬ 
itable, and after a time the most pleasant, period of his whole life, 
one on which he never ceased to look back with unmingled satis¬ 
faction as the starting-point of his studies and intellectual progress. 

The first care of his preceptor was to bring about his religious 
conversion. Gibbon showed an honorable tenacity to his new 
faith, and a whole year after he had been exposed to the Protes¬ 
tant dialectics of Pavillard lie still, as the latter observed with much 


GIBBON. 


j8 

regret, continued to abstain from meat on Fridays. There is some¬ 
thing slightly incongruous in the idea of Gibbon fasting out of 
reli<nous scruples, but the fact shows that his religion had obtained 
no slight hold of him, and that although he had embraced it quickly, 
he also accepted with intrepid frankness all its consequences. His 
was not an intellect that could endure half measures and half lights ; 
he did not belong to that class of persons who do not know their 
own minds, 

However it is not surprising that his religion, placed where he 
was, was slowly but steadily undermined. The Swiss clergy, he 
says, were acute and learned on the topics of controversy, and 
Pavillard seems to have been a good specimen of his class. An 
adult and able man, in daily contact with a youth in his own house, 
urging persistently but with tact one side of a thesis, could hardly 
fail in the course of time to carry his point. But though Gibbon 
is willing to allow his tutor a handsome share in the work of his 
conversion, he maintains that it was chiefly effected by his own 
private reflections. And this is eminently probable. What logic 
had set up, logic could throw down. He gives us a highly charac¬ 
teristic example of the reflections in question. “ I still remember 
my solitary transport at the discovery of a philosophical argument 
against the doctrine of transubstantiation : that the text of Scrip¬ 
ture which seems to inculcate the Real Presence is attested only 
by a single sense—our sight ; while the real presence itself is dis¬ 
proved by three of our senses—the sight, the touch, and the taste.” 
He was unaware of the distinction between the logical understanding 
and the higher reason, which had been made since his time to the 
great comfort of thinkers of a certain stamp. Having reached so 
far, his progress was easy and rapid. “The various articles of the 
Romish creed disappeared like a dream, and after a full conviction, 
on Christmas-day, 1754, I received the sacrament in the church of 
Lusanne. It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries, 
acquiescing with implicit belief in the tenets and mysteries which 
are adopted by the general consent of Catholics and Protestants.” 
He thus had been a Catholic for about eighteen months. 

Gibbon’s residence at Lausanne was a memorable epoch in his 
life on two grounds. Firstly, it was during the five years he spent 
there that he laid the foundations of that deep and extensive learn¬ 
ing by which he was afterwards distinguished. Secondly, the 
foreign education he there received, at the critical period when the 
youth passes into the man, gave a permanent bent to his mind, and 
made him a continental European rather than an insular English¬ 
man-two highly important factors in his intellectual growth. 

He says that he went up to Oxford with a “ stock of erudition 
which might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of 
which a schoolboy might have been ashamed.” Both erudition 
and ignorance were left pretty well undisturbed during his short 
and ill-starred university career. At Lausanne he found himself, 
for the first time, in possession of the means of successful study, 
good health, calm, books, and tuition, up to a certain point: that 


GIB BOX. 


*9 


point did not reach very far. The good Paviilard, an excellent 
man, for whom Gibbon ever entertained a sincere regard, was 
quite unequal to the task of forming such a mind. There is no 
evidence that he was a ripe or even a fair scholar, and the plain 
fact is that Gibbon belongs to the honorable band of self-taught 
men. “ My tutor,” says Gibbon, “had the good sense to dis¬ 
cern how far he could be useful, and when he felt that I advanced 
beyond his speed and measure, he wisely left me to my genius.” 
Under that good guide, once he formed an extensive plan of review¬ 
ing the Latin classics, in the four divisions of (i) Historians, (2) 
Poets, (3) Orators, and (4) Philosophers, in “ chronological series 
from the days of Plautus and Sallust to the decline of the language 
and empire of Rome.” In one year he read over the following 
authors j Virgil, Sallust, Liyy, Velleius Paterculus, Valerius Maxi¬ 
mus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Ouintus Curtins, Justin, Floras, Plautus, 
Terence, and Lucretius. We may take his word when he says 
that this review, however rapid, was neither hasty nor superficial. 
Gibbon had the root of all scholarship in him, the most diligent ac¬ 
curacy and an unlimited faculty of taking pains. But he was a 
great scholar, not a minute one, and belonged to the robust race 
of the Scaligers and the Bentleys, rather than to the smaller 
breed of the Elmsleys and Monks, and of course he was 
at no time a professed philologer, occupied chiefly with the 
niceties of language. The point which deserves notice in this ac¬ 
count of his studies is their wide sweep, so superior and bracing, 
as compared with that narrow restriction to the “ authors of the 
best period,” patronised by teachers who imperfectly comprehend 
their own business. Gibbon proceeded on the common-sense 
principle, that if you want to obtain a real grasp of the literature, 
history, and genius of a people, you must master that literature 
with more or less completeness from end to end, and that to select 
arbitrarily the authors of a short period on the grounds that they 
are models of style, is nothing short of foolish. It .was the prin¬ 
ciple on which Joseph Scaliger studied Greek, and indeed occurs 
spontaneously to a vigorous mind eager for real knowledge.* 

Nor did he confine himself to reading: he felt that no one is 
sure of knowing a language who limits his study of it to the peru¬ 
sal of authors. He practised diligently Latin prose composition, 
and this in the simplest and most effectual way. “ I translated an 
epistle of Cicero into French, and after throwing it aside till the 
words and phrases were obliterated from my memory, I retrans¬ 
lated my French into such Latin as I could find, and then compared 
each sentence of my imperfect version with the ease, the grace, 
the propriety of the Roman orator.” The only odd thing in con¬ 
nection with this excellent method is that Gibbon in his Memoirs 
seems to think it was a novel discovery of his own, and would rec- 

* Vix delibatis conjugationibus Gnecis, Homerum cum interpretatione arreptum uno 
et viginti diebus totum didici- R e'iquos ve; o poctas Grascos omnes intra quatuor menses 
devoravi. Neque ullum oratorem aut historicum prius attigi quam poetas omnes t se¬ 
rein.— Scaligeri Epistol#, Lij . 1. EpE, *. 







20 


GIBBON. 


ornmend it to the imitation of students, whereas it is as old as the 
days of Ascham at least. There is no indication that he ever m 
the least degree attempted Latin verse, and it is improbable that 
he should have done so, reading alone in Lausanne under the 
slight supervision of such a teacher as Pavillard. The lack of this 
elegant frivolity will be less thought of now than it would some 
years a°-o But we may admit that it would have been interesting 
to have & a copy of hexameters or elegiacs by the historian of Rome. 

So much for Latin. In Greek he made far less progress. He 
had attained his nineteenth year before he learned the alphabet, 
and even after so late a beginning he did not prosecute the study 

with much energy. ^ 

M Pavillard seems to have taught him little more than the 
rudiments. “ After my tutor had left me to myself I worked my 
way through about half the Iliad, and afterwards interpreted alone 
a laro-e portion of Xenophon and Herodotus. But my ardour, 
destitute of aid and emulation, gradually cooled, and from the bar¬ 
ren task of searching words in a lexicon I withdrew to the free 
and familiar conversation of Virgil and Tacitus.” This statement 
of the Memoirs is more than confirmed by the journal of his 
studies, where we find him, as late as the. year 1762, when he was 
twenty-five years of age, painfully reading Homer, it would ap¬ 
pear, for the first time. He read on an average about a book a 
week, and when he had finished the Iliad this is what he says : 

“ I have so far met with the success I hoped for, that I have ac¬ 
quired a great facility in reading the language, and treasured up a 
very great stock of words. What I have rather neglected is . the 
grammatical construction of them, and especially the many various 
inflections of the verbs.” To repair this defect he wisely resolved 
to bestow some time every morning on the perusal of the Greek 
Grammar of Port Royal. Thus we see that at an age when many 
men are beginning to forget their Greek, Gibbon was beginning to 
learn it. Was this early deficiency ever repaired in Greek as it 
was in Latin ? I think not. He never was at home in old Hellas 
as he was in old Rome. This may.be inferred from the discursive 
notes of his great work, in which he has with admirable skill in¬ 
corporated so much of his vast and miscellaneous reading. But 
his references to classic Greek authors are relatively few and 
timid compared with his mastery of the Latin. His judg¬ 
ments on Greek authors are also, to say the least, singular, i 
When he had achieved the Decline and Fall , and was writ¬ 
ing his Memoirs in the last years of his life, the Greek writer 
whom he selects for especial commendation is Xenophon. “ Cicero 
in Latin and Xenophon in Greek are indeed the two ancients 
whom I would first propose to a liberal scholar, not only for the 
merit of their style and sentiments, but for the admirable lessons 
which may be applied almost to every situation of public and pri- , 
vate life.” Of the merit of Xenophon’s sentiments, most people 
would now admit that the less said the better. The warmth of 
Gibbon’s language with regard to Xenophon contrasts with the 


GIBBON. 


21 


coldness ne shows with regard to Plato. “ I involved myself,” he 
says, “ in the philosophic maze of the writings of Plato, of which 
perhaps the dramatic is more interesting than the argumentative 
part.” That Gibbon knew amply sufficient Greek for his purposes 
as an historian no one doubts, but his honourable candour enables 
us to see that he was never a Greek scholar in the proper sense 
of the word. 

It would be greatly to misknow Gibbon to suppose that his 
studies at Lausanne were restricted to the learned languages. He 
obtained something more than an elementary knowledge of ma¬ 
thematics, mastered De Crousaz’ Logic and Lock’s Essay , and 
filled up his spare time with that wide and discursive reading to 
which his boundless curiosity was always pushing him. He was 
thoroughly happy and contented, and never ceased throughout his 
life to congratulate himself on the fortunate exile which had placed 
him at Lausanne. In one respect he did not use his opportunities 
while in Switzerland. He never climbed a mountain all the time 
he was there, though he lived to see in his later life the first com¬ 
mencement of the Alpine fever. On the other hand, as became a 
historian and a man of sense, the social and political aspects of the 
country engaged his attention, as well they might. He enjoyed 
access to the best society of the place, and the impression he made 
seems to have been as favorable as the one he received. 

The influence of a foreign training is very marked in Gibbon, 
affecting as it does his general cast of thought, and even his style. 
It would be difficult to name any writer in our language, especially 
among the few who deserve to be compared with him, who is so 
un-English, not in a bad sense of the word, as implying unobjec¬ 
tionable qualities, but as wanting the clear insular stamp and native 
flavor. If an intelligent Chinese or Persian were to read his book 
in a French translation, he would not readily guess that it was 
written by an Englishman. It really bears the imprint of no nation¬ 
ality, and is emphatically European. We may postpone the ques¬ 
tion whether this is a merit or a defect, but it is a characteristic. 
The result has certainly been that he is one of the best-known of 
English prose writers on the Continent, and one whom foreigners 
most readily comprehend. This peculiarity, of which he himself 
was fully aware, we may agree with him in ascribing to his resi¬ 
dence at Lausanne. At the “ flexible age of sixteen he soon 
learned to endure, and gradually to adopt,” foreign manners. 
French became the language in which he spontaneously thought; 
“ his views were enlarged, and his prejudices were corrected.” In 
one particular he cannot be complimented on the effect of his con¬ 
tinental education, when he congratulates himself “ that his taste 
for the French theatre had abated his idolatry for the gigantic ge¬ 
nius of Shakespeare, which is inculcated from our infancy as the first 
duty of Englishmen.” Still it is well to be rid of idolatry and bigotry 
even with regard to Shakespeare. We must remember that the 
insular prejudices from which Gibbon rejoiced to be free were very 
different in their intensity and narrowness from anything of the 


22 


GIBBON. 


kind which exists now. The mixed hatred and contempt for for¬ 
eigners which prevailed in his day, were enough to excite disgust 
in any liberal mind. 

The lucid order and admirable literary form of Gibbon’s great 
work are qualities which can escape no observant reader. But they 
are qualities which are not common in English books. The French 
have a saying, “Les Anglais ne savent pas faire un livre.” This is 
unjust, taken absolutely, but as a general rule it is not without 
foundation. It is not a question of depth or originality of thought, 
nor of the various merits belonging to style properly so-called. In 
these respects English authors need not fear competition. But in 
the art of clear and logical arrangement, of building up a book in 
such order and method that each part contributes to the general 
effect of the whole, we must own that we have many lessons to 
learn of our neighbors. Nowin this quality Gibbon is a French¬ 
man. Not Voltaire himself is more perspicuous than Gibbon. 
Everything is in its place, and disposed in such apparently natural 
sequence that the uninitiated are apt to think the matter could not 
have been managed otherwise. It is a case, if there ever was one, 
of consummate art concealing every trace, not only of art, but even 
of effort. Of course the grasp and penetrating insight which are 
implied here, were part of Gibbon’s great endowment, which only 
Nature could give. But it was fortunate that this genius was edu¬ 
cated in the best school for bringing out its innate quality. 

It would be difficult to explain why, except on that principle of 
decimation by which Macaulay accounted for the outcry against 
Lord Byron, Gibbon’s solitary and innocent love passage has been 
made the theme of a good deal of malicious comment. The parties 
most interested, and who, we may presume, knew the circumstances 
better than any one else, seem to have been quite satisfied with each 
other’s conduct. Gibbon and Mdlle. Curchod, afterwards Madame 
Necker, remained on terms of the most intimate friendship till the 
end of the former’s life. This might be supposed sufficient. But 
it has not been so considered by evil tongues. The merits of the 
case, however, may be more conveniently discussed in a later chap¬ 
ter. At this point it will be enough to give the facts. 

Mdlle. Susanne Curchod was born about the year 1740; her 
father was the Calvinist minister of Crassier, her mother a French 
Huguenot who had preferred her religion to her country. She had 
received a liberal and even learned education from her father, and 
was as attractive in person as she was accomplished in mind. “ She 
was beautiful with that pure virginal beauty which depends on 
early youth” (Sainte-Beuve). In 1757 she was the talk of Lau¬ 
sanne, and could not appear in an assembly or at the play without 
being surrounded by admirers; she was called La Belle Curchod. 
Gibbon’s curiosity was piqued to see such a prodigy, and he was 
smitten with love at first sight. “ I found her ” he says “ learned 
without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and 
elegant in manners.” He was twenty and she seventeen years of 
age; no impediment was placed in the way of their meeting; and 


GIB BOX. 


23 

he was a frequent guest in her father’s house. In fact Gibbon 
paid his court with an assiduity which makes an exception in his 
usually unromantic nature. “ She listened,*’ he says, “ to the voice 
of truth and passion, and I might presume to hope'that I had made 
some impression on a virtuous heart.” We must remember that 
this and other rather glowing passages in his Memoirs were written 
; in his old age, when he had returned to Lausanne, and when after 

! a long separation and many vicissitudes, he and Madame Necker 
were again thrown together in an intimacy of friendship which re¬ 
vived old memories. Letters of hers to him which will be quoted 
in a later chapter show this in a striking light. He indulged, he 
says, his dream of felicity, but on his return to England he soon 
discovered that his father would not hear of this, “strange alliance,” 
and then follows the sentence which has lost him in the eyes of 
some persons. “After a painful struggle I yielded to my fate: I 
sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.” What else he was to do 
under the circumstances does not appear. He was wholly depen¬ 
dent on his father, and on the continent at least parental authority 
is not regarded as a trifling impediment in such cases. Gibbon 
I could only have married Mdlle. Curchod as an exile and a pauper, 
if he had openly withstood his father’s wishes. “All for love ” is 
a very pretty maxim, but it is apt to entail trouble when practically 
applied. Jean Jacques Rousseau, who had the most beautiful 
sentiments on paper, but who in real life was not always a model 
of self-denial, found, as we shall see, grave fault with Gibbon’s 
conduct. Gibbon, as a ^plain man of rather prosaic good sense, 
behaved neither heroically nor meanly. Time, absence, and the 
scenes of a new life, which he found in England, had their usual 
effect; his passion vanished. “ My cure,” he says, “was accele¬ 
rated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and cheerfulness of the 
lady herself, and my love subsided in friendship and esteem.” 

I The probability, indeed, that he and Mdlle. Curchod would ever 
I see each other again, must have seemed remote in the extreme. 

I Europe and England were involved in the Seven Years War; he 
was fixed at home, and an officer in the militia; Switzerland was 
far off: when and where were they likely to meet? They did, 
contrary to all expectation, meet again, and renewed terms not so 
much of friendship as of affection. Mdlle. Curchod, as the wife of 
Necker, became somewhat of a celebrity, and it is chiefly owing to 
these last-named circumstances that the world has ever heard of 
Gibbon’s early love. 

While he was at Lausanne Gibbon made the acquaintance of 
Voltaire, but it led to no intimacy or fruitful reminiscence. “He 
received me with civility as an English youth, but I cannot boast 
of any peculiar notice or distinction.” Still he had “the satisfac¬ 
tion of hearing—an uncommon circumstance—a great poet declaim 
his own productions on the stage.” One is often tempted, in read¬ 
ing Gibbon’s Memoirs, to regret that he adopted the austere plan 
which led him “to condemn the practice of transforming a private 
memorial into a vehicle of satire or praise.” As he truly says, “ It 





24 


GIBBON. 


was assuredly in his power to amuse the reader with a gallery of 
portraits and a collection of anecdotes.” This reserve is particu¬ 
larly disappointing when a striking and original figure like Voltaire 
passes across the field, without an attempt to add one stroke to 
the portraiture of such a physiognomy. 

Gibbon had now (1758) been nearly five years at Lausanne, 
when his father suddenly intimated that he was to return home 
immediately. The Seven Years War was at its height, and the 
French had denied a passage through France to English travellers. 
Gibbon, or more properly his Swiss friends, thought that the alter¬ 
native road through Germany might be dangerous, though it might 
have been assumed that the Great Frederick, so far as he was con¬ 
cerned, would make things as pleasant as possible to British sub¬ 
jects, whose country had just consented to supply him with a much 
needed subsidy. The French route was preferred, perhaps as 
much from a motive of frolic as anything else. Two Swiss officers 
of his acquaintance undertook to convey Gibbon from France as 
one of their companions, under an assumed name, and in borrowed 
regimentals. His complete mastery of French removed any chance j 
of detection on the score of language, and with a “mixture of joy 
and regret” on the nth April, 1758, Gibbon left Lausanne. He j 
had a pleasant journey, but no adventures, and returned to his j 
native land after an absence of four years, ten months, and fifteen 
days. 





GIBBON, 


2 5 


CHAPTER III. 

IN THE MILITIA. 

The only person whom, on his return, Gibbon had the least 
wish to see was his aunt, Catherine Porten. To her house he at 
once hastened, and “ the evening was spent in the effusions of joy 
and tenderness.” He looked forward to his first meeting with his 
father with no slight anxiety, and that for two reasons. First, his 
father had parted from him with anger and menace, and he had no 
idea how he would be received now. Secondly, his mother’s 
place was occupied by a second wife, and an involuntary but strong 
prejudice possessed him against his step-mother. He was most 
agreeably disappointed in both respects. His father “ received 
him as a man, as a friend, all constraint was banished at our first 
interview, and we ever after continued on the same terms of easy 
and equal politeness.” So far the prospect was pleasant. But the 
step-mother remained a possible obstacle to all comfort at home. 
He seems to have regarded his father’s second marriage as an act 
of displeasure with himself, and he was disposed to hate the rival 
of his mother. Gibbon soon found that the injustice was in his 
own fancy, and the imaginary monster was an amiable and deserv¬ 
ing woman. “ I could not be mistaken in the first view of her 
understanding; her knowledge and the elegant spirit of her con¬ 
versation, her polite welcome, and her assiduous care to study and 
gratify my wishes announced at least that the surface would be 
smooth; and my suspicions of art and falsehood were gradually 
dispelled by the full discovery of her warm and exquisite sensibil¬ 
ity.” He became indeed deeply attached to his step-mother. 
“ After some reserve on my side, our minds associated in confi¬ 
dence and friendship, and as Mrs. Gibbon had neither children nor 
the hopes of children, we more easily adopted the tender names 
and genuine characters of mother and son.” A most creditable 
testimony surely to the worth and amiability of both of them. The 
friendship thusbegun continued without break or coolness to the 
end of Gibbon’s life. Thirty-five years after his first interview with 
his step-mother, and only a few months before his own death, when 
he was old and ailing, and the least exertion, by reason of his ex¬ 
cessive corpulence, involved pain and trouble, he made a long 
journey to Bath for the sole purpose of paying Mrs. Gibbon a visit. 
He was very far from being the selfish Epicurean that has been 
sometimes represented. 




26 


GIBBON. 


He had brought with him from Lausanne the first pages of a 
work which, after much bashfulness and delay, he at length pub¬ 
lished in the French language, under the title of Essai sur l'Etude 
de la Litiemture, in the year 1761, that is two years after its com¬ 
pletion. In one respect this juvenile work of Gibbon has little 
merit. The style is at once poor and stilted, and the general 1 
quality of remark eminently commonplace, where it does not fall 
into paradox. On the other hand, it has an interesting and even | 
original side. The main idea of the little book, so far as it has one, 
was excellent, and really above the general thought of the age, 
namely, the vindication of classical literature and history generally 
from the narrow and singular prejudice which prevailed against 
them especially in France. When Gibbon ascribes the design of 
his first work to a “ refinement of vanity, the desire of justifying 
and praising the object of a favorite pursuit,” he does himself Jess 
than justice. This first utterance of his historic genius was 
prompted by an unconscious but deep reaction against that con¬ 
tempt for the past, which was the greatest blot in the speculative 
movement of the eighteenth century. He resists the temper of his 
time rather from instinct than reason, and pleads the cause of 
learning with the hesitation of a man who has not fully seen round 
his subject, or even mastered his own thoughts upon it. Still there 
is his protest against the proposal of D’Alembert, who recom¬ 
mended that after a selection of facts had been made at the end of 
every century the remainder should be delivered to the flames. 
“Let us preserve them all,” he says, “most carefully. A Montes¬ 
quieu will detect in the most insignificant, relations which the 
vulgar overlook.” He resented the haughty pretensions of the 
mathematical sciences to universal dominion, with sufficient vigour 
to have satisfied Auguste Comte. “ Physics and mathematics are 
at present on the throne. They see their sister sciences prostrate 
before them, chained to their chariot, or at most occupied in adorn¬ 
ing their triumph. Perhaps their downfall is not far off.” To 
speak of a positive downfall of exact sciences was a mistake. But 
we may fairly suppose that Gibbon did not contemplate anything 
beyond a relative change of position in the hierarchy of the sciences, 
by which history and politics would recover or attain to a dignity 
which was denied them in his day. In one passage Gibbon shows 
that he had dimly foreseen the possibility of the modern inquiries 
into the conditions of savage life and prehistoric man. “ An Iro¬ 
quois book, even-were it full of absurdities, would be an invaluable 
treasure. It would offer a unique example of the nature of the 
human mind placed in circumstances which we have never known, 
and influenced by manners and religious opinions, the complete 
opposite of ours.” In this sentence Gibbon seems to call in anti¬ 
cipation for the researches which have since Deen prosecuted with 
so much success by eminent writers among ourselves, not to men¬ 
tion similar inquirers on the Continent. 

But in the meantime Gibbon had entered on a career which 
removed him for long months from books and study. Without 




GIBBON. 


27 

sufficiently reflecting on what such a step involved, he had joined 
the militia, which was embodied in the year 1760; and for the next 
two and a half years led as he says, a wandering life of military 
servitude. At first, indeed, he was so pleased with this new mode 
of life that he had serious thoughts of becoming a professional 
soldier. But this enthusiasm speedily wore off, and our “ mimic 
Bellona soon revealed to his eyes her naked deformity.” It was 
indeed no mere playing at soldiering that he had undertaken. He 
was the practical working commander of “ an independent corps of 
476 officers and men. “* In the absence, or even in the presence 
of the two field officers ” (one of whom was his father, the major) 
I was intrusted with the effective labour of dictating the orders 
and exercising the battalion.” And his duty did not consist in 
occasional drilling and reviews, but in serious marches, sometimes 
of thirty miles in a day, and camping under canvas. One encamp¬ 
ment, on Winchester Downs, lasted four months. Gibbon does 
not hesitate to say that the superiority of his grenadiers to the 
detachments of the regular army, with which they were often 
mingled, was so striking that the most prejudiced regular could 
not have hesitated a moment to admit it. But the drilling, and 
manoeuvring, and all that pertained to the serious side of militia 
business interested Gibbon, and though it took up time it gave him 
knowledge of a special kind, of which he quite appreciated the 
value. He was much struck, for instance, by the difference be¬ 
tween the nominal and effective force of every regiment he had 
seen, even when supposed to be complete, and gravely doubts 
whether a nominal army of 100,000 men often brings fifty thousand 
into the field. What he found unendurable was the constant shift¬ 
ing of quarters, the utter want of privacy and leisure it often en¬ 
tailed, and the distasteful society in which he was forced to live. 
For eight months at a stretch he never took a book in his hand. 
‘‘From the day we marched from Blandford, I had hardly a mo¬ 
ment I could call my own, being almost continually in motion, or if 
I was fixed for a day, it was in the guardroom, a barrack, or an 
inn.” Even worse were the drinking and late hours; sometimes 
in “rustic” company, sometimes in company in which joviality and 
wit were more abundant than decorum and common sense, which 
will surprise no one who hears that the famous John Wilkes, who 
was Colonel of the Buckingham militia, was not unfrequently one 
of his boon companions. A few extracts from his journal will be 
enough. “ To-day (August 28, 1762), Sir Thomas Worsley,” the 
colonel of the battalion, “ came to us to dinner. Pleased to see 
him, we kept bumperising till after roll-calling, Sir Thomas assuring 
us every fresh bottle how infinitely sober he was growing.” Sep¬ 
tember 23rd. “ Colonel Wilkes, of the Buckingham militia, dined 

with us, and renewed the acquaintance Sir Thomas and myself had 
begun with him at Reading. I scarcely ever met with a better 
companion ; he has inexhaustible spirits, infinite wit and humour, 
and a great deal of knowledge . . . This proved a very debauched 
day; we drank a great deal both after dinner and supper; and 






28 


GIBBON. 


when at last Wilkes had retired, Sir Thomas and some others (of 
whom I was not one) broke into his room and made him drink a 
bottle of claret in bed.” December 17. “We found old Captain 
Meard at Arlesford with the second division of the Fourteenth. 
He and all his officers supped with us, which made the evening 
rather a drunken one.” Gibbon might well say that the militia was 
unfit for and unworthy of him. . . 

Yet it is quite astonishing to see, as recorded in his journal, 
how keen an interest he still managed to retain in literature in the 
midst of all this dissipation, and how fertile he was of schemes and 
projects of future historical works to be prosecuted under more 
favorable auspices. Subject after subject occurred to him as 
eligible and attractive; he caresses the idea for a time, then lays it 
aside for good reasons. First, he pitched upon the expedition of 
Charles VIII. of France into Italy. He read and meditated upon 
it, and wrote a dissertation of ten'folio pages, besides large notes 
in which he examined the right of Charles VIII. to the crown of 
Naples, and the rival claims of the houses of Anjou and Aragon. 
In a few weeks he gives up this idea, firstly, for the rather odd 
reason that the subject was too remote from us ; and, secondly, for 
the very good reason that the expedition was rather the intro¬ 
duction to great events than great and important in itself. He then 
successively chose and rejected the Crusade of Richard the First; 
the Barons’ War against John and Henry III.; the history of 
Edward the Black Prince; the lives and comparisons of Henry V. 
and the Emperor Titus ; the life of Sir Philip Sidney, and that of 
the Marquis of Montrose. At length he fixed on Sir Waite! 
Raleigh as his hero. On this he worked with all the assiduity 
that his militia life allowed, read a great quantity of original docu. 
ments relating to it, and, after some months of labor, declared that 
“his subject opened upon him, and in general improved upon a 
nearer prospect.” But half a year later he “ is afraid he will have 
to drop his hero.” And he covers half a page with reasons to 
persuade himself that he was right in doing so. Besides the ol> 
vious one that he would be able to add little that was not already 
accessible in Oldys Life of Raleigh, that the topic was exhausted, 
and so forth, he goes on to make these remarks, which have more 
signification to us now than perhaps they had to him when he 
wrote them. “ Could I even surmount these obstacles, I should 
shrink with terror from the modern history of England, where 
every character is a problem and every reader a friend or an 
enemy : when a writer is supposed to hoist a flag of party, and is 
devoted to damnation by the adverse faction. Such would be my 
reception at home ; and abroad the historian of Raleigh must en¬ 
counter an indifference far more bitter than censure or reproach. 
The events of his life are interesting; but his character is am¬ 
biguous ; his actions are obscure; his writings are English, and 
his fame is confined to the narrow limits of our language and our 
island. I must embrace a safer and more extensive theme.” 
Here we see the first gropings after a theme of cosmopolitan 




GIBBON. 


29 


[ interest. He has arrived at two negative conclusions: that it 
! must not be English, and must not be narrow. What it is to be, 

I does not yet appear, for he has still a series of subjects to go 
through, to be taken up and discarded. The history of the liberty 
of the Swiss, which at a later period he partially achieved, was one 
scheme; the history of Florence under the Medici was another. 

! He speaks with enthusiasm of both projects, adding that he will 
| most probably fix upon the latter; but he never did anything of the 
kind. 

These were the topics which occupied Gibbon’s mind during 
' his service in the militia, escaping when he could from the uproar 
and vulgarity of the camp and the guardroom to the sanctuary of 
the historic muse, to worship in secret. But these private de¬ 
votions could not remove his disgust at “the inn, the wine, and the 
company” he was forced to endure, and latterly the militia became 
downright insupportable to him. But honorable motives kept him 
; to his post. “ From a service without danger I might have retired 
without disgrace ; but as often as I hinted a wish of resigning, my 
I fetters were riveted by the friendly intreaties of the colonel, the 
I parental authority of the major, and my own regard for the welfare 
of the battalion.” At last the long-wished-for day arrived, when 
the militia was disbanded. “ Our two companies,” he writes in 
his journal, “were disembodied (December 23rd, 1762), mine at 
Alton, my father’s at Buriton. They fired three volleys, lodged 
the major’s colors, delivered up their arms, received their money, 
partook of a dinner at the major’s expense, and then separated, 
with great cheerfulness and regularity. Thus ended the militia.” 
The compression that his spirit had endured was shown by the 
rapid energy with which he sought a change of scene and oblivion 
of his woes. Within little more than a month after the scene just 
described, Gibbon was in Paris beginning the grand tour. 

With that keen sense of the value of time which marked him, 
Gibbon with great impartiality cast up and estimated the profit 
and loss of his “bloodless campaigns.” Both have been alluded 
to already. He summed up with great fairness in the entry that 
he made m his journal on the evening of the day on which he re¬ 
covered his liberty. “ I am glad that the militia has been, and 
glad that it is no more.” This judgment he confirmed thirty 
years afterwards, when he composed his Memoirs. “ My principal 
obligation to the militia was the making me an Englishman and 
a soTdier. After mv foreign education, with my reserved temper, 
I should long have continued a stranger in my native country, had 
I not been shaken in this various scene of new faces and new 
friends; had not experience forced me to feel the characters of our 
leading men. the state of parties, the forms of office, the operations 
of ourcivil and military system. In this peaceful service I imbibed 
the rudiments of the language and science of tactics, which opened 
a new field of study and observation. I diligently read and medi¬ 
tated the Memoirs Militaires of Quintus Icilius, the only writer 
who has united the merits of a professor and a veteran. The dis- 





GIBBON. 


3° 

cipline and evolution of a modern battalion gave me a clearer 
notion of the phalanx and the legion, and the captain of the Hamp¬ 
shire grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to the 
historian of the Roman Empire.” No one can doubt it who com¬ 
pares Gibbon’s numerous narratives of military operations with the 
ordinary performances of civil historians in those matters. The 
campaigns of Julian, Belisarius, and Heraclius, not to mention 
many others, have not only an uncommon lucidity, but also exhibit 
a clear appreciation of the obstacles and arduousness of warlike 
operations, which is rare or unknown to non-military writers. Mac¬ 
aulay has pointed out that Swift’s party pamphlets are superior in 
an especial way to the ordinary productions of that class, in conse¬ 
quence of Swift’s unavowed but very serious participation in the 
cabinet councils of Oxford and Bolingbroke. In the same manner 
Gibbon had an advantage through his military training, which 
gives him no small superiority to even the best historical writers 
who have been without it. 

The course of foreign travel which Gibbon was now about 
to commence had been contemplated before, but the war and 
the militia had postponed it for nearly three years. It appears 
that as early as the year 1760 the elder Gibbon had conceived the 
project of procuring a seat in Parliament for his son, and was will¬ 
ing to incur the anticipated expense of ,£1500 for that object. 
Young Gibbon, who seems to have very accurately gauged his own 
abilities at that early age, was convinced that the money could be 
much better employed in another way. He wrote in consequence, 
under his father’s roof, a letter to the latter which does such credit 
to his head and to his heart, that, although it is somewhat long, it 
cannot with propriety be omitted here. 

EDWARD GIBBON TO HIS FATHER. 

“Dear Sir, 

“ An address in writing from a person who has the pleasure of being 
with you every day may appear singular. However I have preferred this 
method, as upon paper I can speak without a blush and be heard without 
interruption. If my letter displeases you, impute it, dear sir, to yourself. 
You have treated me, not like a son, but like a friend. Can you be sur¬ 
prised that I should communicate to a friend all my thoughts and all my 
desires ? Unless the friend approve them, let the father never know them ; 
or at least let him know at the same time that however reasonable, however 
eligible, my scheme may appear to me, I would rather forget it for ever 
than cause him the slightest uneasiness. 

“ When I first returned to England, attentive to my future interests, 
you were so good as to give me hopes of a seat in Parliament. This seat, 
it was supposed, would be an expense of fifteen hundred pounds. This 
design flattered my vanity, as it might enable me to shine in so august an 
assembly. It flattered a nobler passion : I promised myself that, by the 
means of this seat, I might one day be the instrument of some good to my 
country. But I soon perceived how little mere virtuous inclination, unas¬ 
sisted by talents, could contribute towards that great end, and a very short 




GIBBON. 


3* 

examination discovered to me that those talents had not fallen to my 
lot. Do not, dear sir, impute this declaration to a false modesty—the mean¬ 
est species of pride. Whatever else I may be ignorant of, I think I know 
myself, and shall always endeavour to mention my good qualities without 
vanity and my defects without repugnance. I shall say nothing of the 
most intimate acquaintance with his country and language, so absolutely 
necessary to every senator ; since they may be acquired, to allege my defi¬ 
ciency in them would seem only the plea of laziness. But I shall say with 
great truth that I never possessed that gift of speech, the first requisite of 
an orator, which use and labour may improve, but which nature can alone 
bestow; that my temper, quiet, retired, somewhat reserved, could neither 
acquire popularity, bear up against opposition, nor mix with ease in the 
crowds of public life ; that even my genius (if you allow me any) is better 
qualified for the deliberate compositions of the closet than for the extempore 
discourses of Parliament. An unexpected objection would disconcert me, 
and as I am incapable of explaining to others what I do not understand 
myself, I should be meditating when I ought to be answering. I even want 
necessary prejudices of party and of nation. In popular assemblies it is 
often necessary to inspire them, and never orator inspired well a passion 
which he did not feel himself. Suppose me even mistaken in my own 
character, to set out with the repugnance such an opinion must produce 
offers but an indifferent prospect. But I hear you say it is not necessary that 
every man should enter into Parliament with such exalted hopes. It is to 
acquire a title the most glorious of any in a free country, and to employ 
the weight and consideration it gives in the service of one’s friends. Such 
motives, though not glorious, yet are not dishonourable, and if we had a 
borough in our command, if you could bring me in without any great 
expense, or if our fortune enabled us to despise that expense, then indeed 
I should think them of the greatest strength. But with our private for¬ 
tune, is it worth while to purchase at so high a rate a title honourable in 
itself, but which I must share with every fellow that can lay out 1500 
pounds ? Besides, dear sir, a merchandise is of little value to the owner 
when he is resolved not to sell it. 

“ I should affront your penetration did I not suppose you now see the 
drift of this letter. It is to appropriate to another use the sum with which 
you destined to bring me into Parliament; to employ it, not in making me 
great, but in rendering me happy. I have often heard you say yourself that 
the allowance you had been so indulgent as to grant me, though very 
liberal in regard to your estate, was yet but small when compared with the 
almost necessary extravagances of the age. I have indeed found it so, 
notwithstanding a good deal of economy, and an exemption from many of 
the common expenses of youth. This, dear sir, would be a way of sup¬ 
plying these deficiencies without any additional expense to you. But I 
forbear—if you think my proposals reasonable, you want no entreaties to 
engage you to comply with them, if otherwise all will be without effect. 

“ All that I am afraid of, dear sir, is that I should seem not so much 
asking a favour, as this really is, as exacting a debt. After all I can say, 
you will remain the best judge of my good and your own circumstances. 
Perhaps, like most landed gentlemen, an addition to my annuity would 
suit you better than a sum of money given at once ; perhaps the sum itself 
may be too considerable. Whatever you may think proper to bestow on 
me, or in whatever manner, will be received with equal gratitude. 

“ I intended to stop here, but as I abhor the least appearance of art, I 
think it better to lay open my whole scheme at once. The unhappy war 
which now desolates Europe will oblige me to defer seeing France till a 



GIBBON. 


32 

peace. But that reason can have no influence on Italy, a country which 
every scholar must long to see. Should you grant my request, and not 
disapprove of my manner of employing your bounty, I would leave Eng- j 
land this autumn and pass the winter at Lausanne with M. de Voltaire 
and my old friends. In the spring I would cross the Alps, and after some ; 
stay in Italy, as the war must then be terminated, return home through 
France, to live happily with you and my dear mother. I am now two-and- 4 
twenty; a tour must take up a considerable time ; and although I believe 
you have no thoughts of settling me soon (and I am sure I have not), yet 
so many things may intervene that the man who does not travel early runs 
a great risk of not travelling at all. But this part of my scheme, as well 
as the whole of it, I submit entirely to you. 

“ Permit me, dear sir, to add that I do not know whether the complete 
compliance with my wishes could increase my love and gratitude, but that 
I am very sure no refusal could diminish those sentiments with which I 
shall always remain, dear sir, your most dutiful and obedient son and 
servant E. GIBBON, Jun.” 

Instead of going to Italy in the autumn of 1760, as he fondly 
hoped when he wrote this letter, Gibbon was marching about the 
south of England at the head of his grenadiers. But the scheme 
sketched in the above letter was only postponed, and ultimately 
realized in every particular. The question of a seat in Parliament 
never came up during his father’s life, and no doubt the money it 
would have cost was, according to his wise suggestion, devoted to 
defray the expenses of his foreign tour, which he is now about to 
begin. 






GIBBON. 


33 


CHAPTER TV. 

THE ITALIAN JOURNEY. 

Gibbon reached Paris on the 28th January. 1763; thirty-six 
days, as he tells us, after the disbanding of the militia. He re¬ 
mained a little over three months in the French capital, which on 
the whole pleased him so well that he thinks that if he had been 
independent and rich, he might have been tempted to make it his 
permanent residence. 

On the other hand he seems to have been little if at all aware 
of the extraordinary character of the society of which he became a 
spectator and for a time a member. He does not seem to have 
been conscious that he was witnessing one of the most singular 
social phases which have yet been presented in the history of man. 
And no blame attaches to him for this. No one of his contempo¬ 
raries saw deeper in this direction than he did. It is a remarkable 
instance of the way in which the widest and deepest social move¬ 
ments are veiled to the eyes of those who see them, precisely 
because of their width and depth. Foreigners, especially English¬ 
men, visited Paris in the latter half of the eighteenth century and 
reported variously of their experience and impressions. Some, 
like Hume and Sterne, are delighted; some, like Gibbon, are 
quietly, but thoroughly pleased; some, like Walpole—though he 
perhaps is a class by himself—are half pleased and half disgusted. 
They all feel that there is something peculiar in what they witness, 
but never seem to suspect that nothing like it was ever seen before 
in the world. One is tempted to wish that they could have seen 
with our eyes, or, much more, that we could have had the privilege 
of enjoying their experience, of spending a few months in that 
singular epoch when society,” properly so called, the assembling 
of men and women in drawing-rooms for the purpose of conver¬ 
sation, was the most serious as well as the most delightful business 
of life. Talk and discussion in the senate, the market-place, and 
the schools are cheap; even barbarians are not wholly without 
them. But their refinement and concentration in the salon —of 
which the president is a woman of tact and culture—this is a phe¬ 
nomenon which never appeared but in Paris in the eighteenth 
century. And yet scholars, men of the world, men of business 
passed through this wonderland with eyes blindfolded. They are 

3 




34 


GTBHOX. 


free to enter, they go, they come, without a sign that they have 
realized the marvellous scene that they were permitted to traverse. 
One does not wonder that they did not perceive that in those grace¬ 
ful drawing-rooms, filled with stately company of elaborate manners, 
ideas and sentiments were discussed and evolved which would soon 
be more explosive than gunpowder. One does not wonder that 
they did not see ahead of them—men never do. One does rather 
wonder that they did not see what was before their eyes. But 
wonder is useless and a mistake. People who have never seen a 
volcano cannot be expected to fear the burning lava, or even to see 
that a volcano differs from any other mountain. 

Gibbon had brought good introductions from London, but he 
admits that they were useless, or rather superfluous. His nation¬ 
ality and his Essai were his best recommendations. It was the 
day of Anglomania, and, as he says, “ every Englishman was sup¬ 
posed to be a patriot and a philosopher.” “ I had rather be,” said 
Mdlle. de Lespinasse to Lord Shelburne, “the least member of the 
House of Commons than even the King of Prussia.” Similar 
things must have been said to Gibbon, but he has not recorded 
them ; and generally it may be said that he is disappointingly dull 
and indifferent to Paris, though he liked it well enough when there. 
He never caught the Paris fever as Hume did, and Sterne, or even 
as Walpole did, for all the hard things he says of the underbred 
and overbearing manners of the philosophers. Gibbon had ready 
access to the well-known houses of Madame Geoffrin, Madame 
Helvetius, and the Baron d’Holbach ; and his perfect mastery of 
the language must have removed every obstacle in the way of com¬ 
plete social intercourse. But no word in his Memoirs or Letters 
shows that he really saw with the eyes of the mind the singular¬ 
ities of that strange epoch. And yet he was there at an exciting 
and important moment. The Order of the Jesuits was tottering 
to its fall; the latter volumes of the Encyclopedia were bein^ 
printed, and it was no secret; the coruscating wit and audacitv of 
the salons were at their height. He is not unjust or prejudiced, but 
somewhat cold. He dines with Baron ■ d’Holbach, and says his 
dinners were excellent, but nothing of the guests. He goes to 
adame Geoffrin, and pronounces her house an excellent one. 
Such faint and commonplace praise reflects on the eulogist. The 
only man of letters of whom he speaks with warmth is Helvetius. 
He does not appear in this first visit to have known Madame du 
?^ and ’/??i7 Wa - S " ke ®P' n S ller sal »n with the help of the pale 
T n £ R ed - L E jP'" asse > th °«gh ‘he final rupture was imminent. 
The A '" 6 d i' ed ’ a ° d S ,° d ' d Marivaux > while he was in Paris. 
Wl he! d '?P era - |,< ?. us , e m ‘he Palais Royal was burnt down when he 
had been there a little over a month, and the representations were 
transferred to the Salles des Machines, in the Tuileries The 
equestrian statue of Louis XV. was set up in the Place to which 
de^kTcn ( whc ^ e the Luxor column now stands, in the Place 

declared it wmfld am,dst the jeers and insults of the mob, who 
declared it would never be got to pass the hotel of Madame de 





GIBBON. 


35 

Pompadour. How much or how little of all this touched Gibbon, 
we do not know. We do know one thing, that his English clothes 
were unfashionable and looked very foreign, the French being 
“ excessively long-waisted.” Doubtless his scanty purse could not 
afford a new outfit, such as Walpole two years afterwards, under 
the direction of Lady Hertford, promptly procured. On the 8th 
of May he hurried off to Lausanne.* 

His ultimate object was Italy. But he wisely resolved to place 
a period of solid study between the lively dissipation of Paris and 
his classic pilgrimage. He knew the difference between seeing 
things he had read about and reading about things after he had 
seen them; how the mind, charged with associations of famous 
scenes, is delicately susceptible of impressions, and how rapidly 
old musings take form and colour, when stirred by outward realities; 
and contrariwise, how slow and inadequate is the effort to reverse 
this process, and to clothe with memories, monuments and sites 
over which the spirit has not sent a. halo of previous meditation. 
So he settled down quietly at Lausanne for the space of nearly a 
year, and commenced a most austere and systematic course of 
reading on the antiquities of Italy. The list of learned works 
which he perused “ with his pen in his hand ” is formidable, and 
fills a quarto page. But he went further than this, and compiled 
an elaborate treatise on the nations, provinces, and towns of ancient 
Italy (which we still have) digested in alphabetical order, in which 
every Latin author, from Plautus to Rutilius, is laid under contri¬ 
bution for illustrative passages, which are all copied out in full. 
This laborious work was evidently Gibbon’s own guide-book in his 
Italian travels, and one sees not only what an admirable prepara¬ 
tion it was for the object in view, but what a promise it contained 
of that scrupulous thoroughness which was to be his mark as an 
historian. His mind was indeed rapidly maturing, and becoming 
conscious in what direction its strength lay. 

His account of his first impressions of Rome has been often 
quoted, and deserves to be so again. “ My temper is not very 
susceptible of enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm which I do not 
feel I have ever scorned to affect. But at the distance of twenty- 
five years I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions 
which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the 
Eternal City. After a sleepless night, I trod with a lofty step the 
ruins of the Forum. Each memorable spot where Romulus stood, 
or Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my eye, and 
several days of intoxication were lost and enjoyed before I could 
descend to a cool and minute examination.” He gave eighteen 
weeks to the study of Rome only, and six to Naples, and we may 
rest assured that he made good use of his time. But what makes 
this visit to Rome memorable in his life and in literary history is 
that it was the occasion and date of the first conception of his 
great work. “ It was at Rome, on the 15th October, 1764, as I sat 

* The chronicle of events which occurred during Gibbon’s sojourn in Paris will be found 
in the interesting hlcinoires de Bachaumont. 





GIBBON. 


36 

musing amici the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars 
were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of 
writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.” 
The scene, the contrast of the old religion and the new, the priests 
of Christ replacing the flamens of Jupiter, the evensong of Catholic 
Rome swelling like a dirge over the prostrate Pagan Rome might 
well concentrate in one grand luminous idea the manifold but un¬ 
connected thoughts with which his mind had so long been teeming. 
Gibbon had found his work, which was destined to fill the re¬ 
mainder of his life. Henceforth there is a fixed centre around 
which his thoughts and musings cluster spontaneously. Diffi¬ 
culties and interruptions are not wanting. The plan then formed 
is not taken in hand at once ; on the contrary, it is contemplated 
at “ an awful distance ; ” but it led him on like a star guiding his 
steps, till he reached his appointed goal. 

After crossing the Alps on his homeward journey, Gibbon had 
had some thoughts of visiting the southern provinces of France. 
But when he reached Lyons he found letters “ expressive of some 
impatience ” for his return. Though he does not exactly say as 
much, we may justly conclude that the elder Gibbon’s pecuniary 
difficulties were beginning to be oppressive. So the traveller, with 
dutifulness that he ever showed to his father, at once bent his 
steps northward. Again he passed through Paris, and the place 
had a new attraction in his eyes in the person of Mdlle. Curchod, 
now become Madame Necker, and wife of the great financier. 

This perhaps will be the most convenient place to notice and 
estimate a certain amount of rather spiteful gossip, of which Gib¬ 
bon was the subject in Switzerland about this time. Rousseau and 
his friend Moultou have preserved it for us, and it is probable that 
it has lost none of its pungency in passing through the hands of 
the latter. The substance of it is this:—that in the year 1763, 
when Gibbon revisited Lausanne, as we have seen, Susanne Cur¬ 
chod was still in a pitiable state of melancholy and well nigh 
broken-hearted at Gibbon’s manifest coldness, which we know he 
considered to be “ friendship and esteem.” Whether he even saw 
her on this visit cannot be considered certain, but it is at least 
highly probable. Be that as it may : this is the picture of her 
condition as drawn by Moultou in a letter to Rousseau : “ How 
sorry I am for our poor Mdlle. Curchod! Gibbon, whom she loves, 
and to whom I know she has sacrificed some excellent matches, 
has come to Lausannej but cold, insensible, and as entirely cured 
of his old passion as she is far from cure. She has written 
me a letter that makes my heart ache.” Rousseau says in reply, 
“ He who does not appreciate Mdlle. Curchod is not worthy of her; 
he who appreciates her and separates himself from her is a man to 
be despised. She does not know what she wants. Gibbon serves 
her better than her own heart. I would rather a hundred times 
that he left her poor and free among you than that he should take 
her off to be rich and miserable in England,” One does not quite 
see how Gibbon could have acted to the contentment of Jean- 



GIBBON. 


37 

Jacques. For not taking Mdlle. Curchod to England—as we may 
presume he would have done if he had married her—he is contemp¬ 
tible. Yet if he does take her he will make her miserable, and 
Rousseau would rather a hundred times he left her alone—precisely 
what he was doing ; but then he was despicable for doing it. The 
question is whether there is not a good deal of exaggeration in all 
this. Only a year after the tragic condition in which Moultou 
describes Mdlle. Curchod she married M. Necker, and became 
devoted to her husband. A few months after she married Necker 
she cordially invited Gibbon to her house every day of his sojourn 
in Paris. If Gibbon had behaved in the unworthy way asserted, 
if she had had her feelings so profoundly touched and lacerated as 
Moultou declares, would she, or even could she, have acted thus ? 
If she was conscious of being wronged, and he was conscious—as 
he must have been—of having acted basely, or at least unfeelingly, 
is it not as good as certain that both parties would have been care¬ 
ful to see as little of each other as possible ? A broken-off love- 
match, even without complication of unworthy conduct on either 
side, is generally an effective bar to further intercourse. But in 
this case the intercourse is renewed on the very first opportunity, 
and never dropped till the death of one of the persons concerned. 

Two letters have been preserved of Gibbon and Madame Necker 
respectively, nearly of the same date, and both referring to this rather 
delicate topic of their first interviews after her marriage. Gibbon 
writes to his friend Holroyd, “ The Curchod (Madame Necker) I 
saw in Paris. She was very fond of me, and the husband particu¬ 
larly civil. Could they insult me more cruelly ? Ask me every 
evening to supper, go to bed and leave me alone with his wife— 
what impertinent security ! It is making an old lover of mighty 
little consequence. She is as handsome as ever, and much gen- 
teeler ; seems pleased with her wealth rather than proud of it. I 
was exalting Nanette d’lllens’s good luck and the fortune ” (this 
evidently refers to some common acquaintance, who had changed 
her name to advantage). “ 4 What fortune,’ she said with an air of 
contempt:— 4 not above twenty thousand livres a year.’ I smiled, 
and she caught herself immediately, 4 What airs I give myself in 
despising twenty thousand livres a year, who a year ago looked 
upon eight hundred as the summit of my wishes.’ ” 

Let us turn to the lady’s account of the same scenes. 44 I do 
not know if I told you,” she writes to a friend at Lausanne, 44 that 
I have seen Gibbon, and it has given me more pleasure than I know 
how to express. Not indeed that I retain any sentiment for a man 
who I think does not deserve much ” (this little toss of pique or 
pride need not mislead us) ; 44 but my feminine vanity could not 
have had a more complete and honest triumph. He stayed two 
weeks in Paris, and I had him every day at my house ; he has 
become soft, yielding, humble, decorous to a fault. He was a 
constant witness of my husband’s kindness, wit, and gaiety, and 
made me remark for the first time, by his admiration for wealth, the 
opulence with which I am surrounded, and which up to this mo- 



GIBBON 


38 

ment had only produced a disagreeable impression upon me.” 
Considering the very different points of view of the writers, these 
letters are remarkably in unison. The solid fact of the daily visits 
is recorded in both. It is easy to gather from Madame Necker’s 
letter that she was very glad to show Mr. Gibbon that for going 
farther and not marrying him she had not fared worse. The 
rather acid allusion to “ opulence ” is found in both letters ; 
but much more pronounced in hers than in his. Each hints 
that the other thought too much of wealth. But he does so with 
delicacy, and only by implication ; she charges him coarsely 
with vulgar admiration for it. We may reasonably suspect that 
riches had been the subject of not altogether smooth conversation 
between them, in the later part of the evening, perhaps, after M. 
Necker had retired in triumph to bed. One might even fancy that 
there was a tacit allusion by Madame Necker to the dialogue 
recorded by Gibbon to Holroyd, when his smile checked her 
indirect pride in her own wealth, and that she remembered that 
smile with just a touch of resentment. If so, nothing was more 
natural and comforting than to charge him with the failing that he 
had detected in her. But here are the facts. Eight months after 
her marriage, Madame Necker admits that she had Gibbon every 
day to her house. He says that she was very cordial. She would 
have it understood that she received him only for the sake of grati¬ 
fying a feminine vanity. For her own sake one might prefer his 
interpretation to hers. It is difficult to believe that the essentially 
simple-minded Madame Necker would have asked a man every day 
to her house merely to triumph over him ; and more difficult still 
to believe that a man would have gone if such had been the object 
A little tartness in these first interviews,-following on a relation of 
some ambiguity, cannot surprise one. But it was not the dominant 
ingredient, or the interviews must have ceased of their own accord. 
In any case few will admit that either of the persons concerned 
would have written as they did if Moultou’s statement were correct. 
In neither epistle is there any trace of a grand passion felt or 
slighted. We discover the much lower level of vanity and badinage. 
And the subsequent relations of Gibbon and Madame Necker all 
tend to prove that his was the real one. 



GIBBON. 


39 


CHAPTER V. 

LITERARY SCHEMES.—THE HISTORY OF SWITZERLAND.—DISSER¬ 
TATION ON THE SIXTH jENEID.—FATHER’S DEATH.—SETTLE¬ 
MENT IN LONDON. 

Gibbon now (June 1765) returned to his father’s house, and 
remained there till the latter’s death in 1770. He describes these 
five years as having been the least pleasant and satisfactory of his 
whole life. The reasons were not far to seek. The unthrifty habits of 
the elder Gibbon were now producing their natural result. He was 
saddled with debt, from which two mortgages, readily consented to 
by his son, and the sale of the house at Putney, only partially re¬ 
lieved him. Gibbon now began to fear that he had an old age of 
poverty before him. He had pursued knowledge with single- 
hearted loyalty, and now became aware that from a worldly point 
of view knowledge is not often a profitable investment. A more 
dejecting discovery cannot be made by the sincere scholar. He is 
conscious of labor and protracted effort, which the prosperous pro¬ 
fessional man and tradesman who pass him on their road to wealth 
with a smile of scornful pity have never known. He has forsaken 
comparatively all for knowledge, and the busy world meets him with 
a blank stare, and surmises shrewdly that he is but an idler, with 
an odd taste for wasting his time over books. It says much for 
Gibbon’s robustness of spirit that he did not break down in these 
trying years, that he did not weakly take fright at his prospect, and 
make hasty and violent efforts to mend it. On the contrary, he re¬ 
mained steadfast and true to the things of the mind. With dimin¬ 
ished cheerfulness perhaps, but with no abatement of zeal, he pur¬ 
sued his course and his studies, thereby proving that he belonged 
to the select class of the strong and worthy who, penetrated with 
the loveliness of science, will not be turned away from it. 

His first effort to redeem the time was a project of a history of 
Switzerland. His choice was decided by two circumstances : (1) 
his love for a country which he had made his own by adoption; (2) 
by the fact that he had in his friend Deyverdun, a fellow-worker 
who could render him most valuable assistance. Gibbon never 
knew German, which is not surprising when we reflect what Ger¬ 
man literature amounted to, in those days ; and he soon discovered 
that the most valuable authorities of his projected work were in the 
German language. But Deyverdun was a perfect master of that 



40 


GIBBON. 


toneue, and translated a mass of documents for the use of his friend 
They laboured for two years in collecting materials, before 0 - bbon 
felt himself iustified in entering on the ‘ more agreeable task of 
composition.” And even then he considered the preparation in¬ 
sufficient, as no doubt it was. He felt he could not do justice to 
his subject; uninformed as he was “ by the scholais and statesmen, 
and remote from the archives and libraries of the Swiss republic 
Such a beginning was not of good augury for the success of the 
undertaking He never wrote more than about sixty quarto pages 
of the projected work, and these, as they were in French, were sub¬ 
mitted to the judgment of the literary society of foreigners in Lon¬ 
don, before whom the MS. was read. The author was unknown 
and Gibbon attended the meeting, and thus listened without bein 
observed “ to the free strictures and unfavourable sentence of his 
iud^es.” He admits that the momentary sensation was painful; 
butdie condemnation was ratified by his cooler thoughts : and he 
declares that he did not regret the loss of a slight and superficial 
essay, though it “ had cost some expense, much labour, and more 
time.” He says in his Memoirs that he burnt the sheets. But 
this, strange to say, was a mistake on his part. They were found 
among his papers after his death, and though not published by 
Lord Sheffield in the first two volumes of his Miscellaneous Works, 
which the latter edited in 1796, they appeared in the supplemental 
third volume which came out in 1815. We thus can judge for our¬ 
selves of their value. One sees at once why and how they failed 
to satisfy their author’s mature judgment. They belonged to that 
style of historical writing which consists in the rhetorical tran¬ 
scription and adornment of the original authorities, but in which the 
writer never gets close enough to his subject to apply the touch¬ 
stone of a clear and trenchant criticism. Such criticism indeed was 
not common in Switzerland in his day, and one cannot blame Gib¬ 
bon for not anticipating the researches of modern investigators. 
But his historical sense was aroused to suspicion by the story of 
William Tell, which he boldly sets down as a fable. Altogether, 
one may pronounce the sketch to be pleasantly written in a flowing, 
picturesque narrative, and showing immense advance in style be¬ 
yond the essay on the Study of Literature. David Hume, to whom 
he submitted it, urged him to persevere, and the advice was justified 
under the circumstances, although one cannot now regret that it 
was not followed, 

After the failure of this scheme Gibbon, still in connection with 
Deyverdun, planned a periodical work under the title of Mimoires 
Littdraires de la Grande Bretagne. Only two volumes ever ap¬ 
peared, and the speculation does not seem to have met with much 
success. Gibbon “ presumes to say that their merit was superior 
to their reputation, though they produced more reputation than 
emolument.” The first volume is executed with evident pains, and 
gives a fair picture of the literary and social condition of England 
at the time. The heavy review articles are interspersed with what 
is intended to be lighter matter on the fashions, foibles, and promi- 










GIBBON. 


4* 

nent characters of the day. Gibbon owns the authorship of the first 
article on Lord Littelton’s history of Henry the Second, and his 
hand is discernible in the account of the fourth volume of Lardner’s 
work On the Credibility of the Gospel History. The first has no 
merit beyond a faithful report. The latter is written with much more 
zest and vigour, and shows the interest that he already took in Chris¬ 
tian antiquities. Other articles, evidently from the pen of Deyver- 
dun, on the English theatre and Beau Nash of Bath, are the'live¬ 
liest in the collection. The magazine was avowedly intended for 
Continental readers, and might have obtained success if it had 
been continued long enough. But it died before it had time to 
make itself known.* 

When the Mi moires Liitiraires collapsed Gibbon was again left 
without a definite object to concentrate his energy, and with his work 
still to seek. One might wonder why he did not seriously prepare 
for the Decline and Fall. It must have been chiefly at this time 
that it was “contemplated at an awful distance,” perhaps even with 
numbing doubt whether the distance would ever be lessened and 
the work achieved, or even begun. The probability is he had 
too little peace of mind to undertake anything that required calm 
and protracted labour. “ While so many of my acquaintance were 
married, or in Parliament, or advancing with a rapid step in the 
various roads of honor or fortune I stood alone, immovable, and in¬ 
significant. . . . The progress and the. knowledge of our domestic 
disorders aggravated my anxiety, and I began to apprehend that 
in my old age I might be left without the fruits of either industry 
or Inheritance.” Perhaps a reasonable apprehension of poverty is 
more paralysing than the reality. In the latter case prompt action 
is so imperatively commanded that the mind has no leisure for the 
fatal indulgence of regrets ; but when indigence seems only immi¬ 
nent, and has not yet arrived, a certain lethargy is apt to be pro¬ 
duced out of which only the most practical characters can rouse 
themselves, and these are not, as a rule, scholars by nature. We 
need not be surprised that Gibbon during these years did nothing 
serious, and postponed undertaking his great work. The inspira¬ 
tion needed to accomplish such a long and arduous course as it im¬ 
plied could not be kindled in a mind harrassed by pecuniary cares. 
The fervent heat of a poet’s imagination may glow as brightly in 
poverty as in opulence, but the gentle yet prolonged enthusiasm of 
the historian is likely to be quenched when the resources of life are 
too insecure.f 

It is perhaps not wholly fanciful to suspect that Gibbon’s next 

* Two volumes appeared of the Mentoires Littkraires. Of these only the first is to 
be found in the British Museum. It is a small i2mo, containing 230 pages. Here is the 
Table des Mati&res(1) Histoire de Henri II., par Milord Lyttelton ; (2) Le Nouveau 
Guide de Bath ; (3) Essai sur 1 ’ Histoire de la Sociktk Civile, par M. Ferguson ; (4) Con¬ 
clusions des Mkmoires de Miss Sydney Bidulph ; Theologie (5) Recueil des Tkmoignages 
Anciens, par Lardner ; (6) Le Confessional ; (7) Transactions Philosophiques ; (8) Le 
Gouverneur, par D. L. F. Spectacles, Beaux Arts, Nouvelles Littkraires. 

t Scholarship has been frequently cultivated amidst great poverty ; but from the time 
of Thucydides, the owner of mines, to Grote, the banker, historians seem to have been in, 
at least, easy circumstances. 





GIGBON. 


42 

literary effort was suggested and determined by the inward dis¬ 
composure he felt at this time. By nature he was not a contro¬ 
versialist; not that he wanted the abilities to support that charac¬ 
ter, but his mind was too full, fertile, and fond of real knowledge 
to take much pleasure in the generally barren occupation of gain¬ 
saying other men. But at this point in his life he made an excep¬ 
tion, and an unprovoked exception. When he wrote his famous 
vindication of the first volume of the Decline and Fall he was act¬ 
ing in self-defence, and repelling savage attacks upon his historical 
veracity. But in his Critical Observations on the Sixth Book of 
the JEneid he sought controversy for its own sake, and became a 
polemic—shall we say out of gaiety or bitterness of heart ? That 
inward unrest easily produces an aggressive spirit is a matter of 
common observation, and it may well have been that in attacking 
Warburton he sought a diversion from the worry of domestic 
cares. Be that as it may, his Observations are the most pungent 
and dashing effusion he ever allowed himself. It was his first 
effort in English prose, and it is doubtful whether he ever man¬ 
aged his mother tongue better, if indeed he ever managed it so 
well. The little tract is written with singular spirit and rapidity 
of style. It is clear, trenchant, and direct to a fault. It is indeed 
far less critical than polemical, and shows no trace of lofty calm, 
either moral or intellectual. We are not repelled much by his ea¬ 
gerness to refute and maltreat his opponent. That was not alien 
from the usages of the time, and Warburton at least had no right 
to complain of such a style of controversy. But there is no width 
and elevation of view. The writer does not carry the discussion 
up to a higher level, and dominate his adversary from a superior 
standpoint. Controversy is always ephemeral and vulgar, unless 
it can rise to the discussion and establishment of facts and prin¬ 
ciples valuable for themselves, independently of the particular 
point at issue. It is this quality which has made the master-works 
of Chillingworth and Bentley supereminent. The particular point 
for which the writers contended is settled or forgotten. But in 
moving up to that point they touched—such was their large dis¬ 
course of reason—on topics of perennial interest, did such justice, 
though only in passing, to certain other truths, that they are grate¬ 
fully remembered ever after. Thus Bentley’s dissertation on Pha- 
laris is read, not for the main thesis—proof of the spuriousness of 
the letters—but for the profound knowledge and admirable logic 
with which subsidiary positions are maintained on the way to it. 
Tried by this standard, and he deserves to be tried by a high stand¬ 
ard, Gibbon fails not much, but entirely. The Obse?vations are 
rarely, if ever, quoted as an authority of weight by anyone engaged 
on classical or Virgilian literature. This arises from the attitude 
of the writer, who is nearly solely occupied with establishing neg¬ 
ative conclusions that ./Eneas was not a lawgiver, that the Sixth 
^Eneid is not an allegory, that Virgil had not been initiated in 
the Eleusinan mysteries when he wrote it, and so forth. Indeed 
the best judges now hold that he has not done full justice to the 


GIBBON. 


43 

grain of truth that was to be found in Warburton’s clumsy ani 
prolix hypothesis.* It should be added that Gibbon very candidly 
admits and regrets the acrimonious style of the pamphlet, and con¬ 
demns still more “in a personal attack his cowardly concealment 
of his name and character.” 

The Observations were the last work which Gibbon published 
in his father’s lifetime. His account of the latter’s death (Novem 
ber io, 1770) is feelingly written, and shows the affectionate side 
of his own nature to advantage. He acknowledges his father’s 
failings, his weakness and inconstancy, but insists that they were 
compensated by the virtues of the head and heart, and the warmest 
sentiments of honour and humanity. “ His graceful person, polite 
address, gentle manners, and unaffected cheerfulness recommended 
him to the favour of every company.” And Gibbon recalls with 
emotion “ the pangs of shame, tenderness, and self-reproach ” 
which preyed on his father’s mind at the prospect, no doubt, of 
leaving an embarrassed estate and precarious fortune to his son 
and widow. He had no taste for study in the fatal summer of 
1770, and declares that he would have been ashamed if he had. 
“ I submitted to the order of nature,” he says, in words which re¬ 
call his resignation on losing his mistress—“ I submitted to the 
order of nature, and'my grief was soothed by the conscious satis¬ 
faction that I had discharged all the duties of filial piety.” We 
see Gibbon very fairly in this remark. He had tenderness, steady 
and warm attachments, but no passion. 

Nearly two years elapsed after his father’s death, before he 
was able to secure from the wreck of his estate a sufficient com¬ 
petence to establish himself in London. His house was No. 7, 
Bentinck Street, near Manchester Square, then a remote suburb 
close to the country fields. His housekeeping was that of a soli¬ 
tary bachelor, who could afford an occasional dinner-party. Though 
not absolutely straitened in means, we shall presently see that he 
was never quite at his ease in money matters while he remained in 
London. But he had now freedom and no great anxieties, and he 
began seriously to contemplate the execution of his great work. 

Gibbon, as we have seen, looked back with little satisfaction on 
the five years between his return from his travels and his father’s 
death. They are also the years during which his biographer is 
able to follow him with the least certainty. Hardly any of his let¬ 
ters which refer to that period have been preserved, and he has 
glided rapidly over it in his Memoirs. Yet it was, in other respects 
besides the matter of pecuniary troubles, a momentous epoch in his 
life. The peculiar views which he adopted and partly professed on 
religion must have been formed then. But the date, the circum¬ 
stance, and the occasion, are left in darkness. Up to December 18, 

* Conington, Introduction to the Sixth JEneid. “ A reader of the present day will, I 
think, be induced to award the palm of learning and ingenuity to Warburton.” “The 
language and imagery of the sixth book more than once suggests that Virgil intended to 
embody in his picture the poetical view of that inner side of ancient religion which the 
mysteries may be supposed to have presented .”—Suggestion on the Study of the JEneid, 
by H. Nettleship, p. 13* 



44 


GIBBON. 


1763, Gibbon was evidently a believer. In an entry in his private 
journal under that date he speaks of a Communion Sunday at Lau¬ 
sanne as affording an “ edifying spectacle,” on the ground that 
there is “ neither business nor parties, and they interdict even 
whist ” on that day. How soon after this his opinions began to 
change, it is impossible to say. But we are conscious of a mark¬ 
edly different tone in the Observations, and a sneer at “the an¬ 
cient alliance between the avarice of the priests and the credulity 
of the people” is in the familiar style of the Deists from Toland 
to Chubb. There is no evidence of his familiarity with the widely 
diffused works of the freethinkers, and as far as I am aware he 
does not quote or refer to them even once. But they could hardly 
have escaped his notice. Still his strong historic sense and solid 
erudition would be more likely to be repelled than attracted by 
their vague and inaccurate scholarship, and chimerical theories of 
the light of Nature. Still we know that he practically adopted, in 
the end, at least the negative portion of these views, and the ques¬ 
tion is, When did he do so ? His visit to Paris, and the company 
that he frequented there, might suggest that as a probable date of 
his change of opinions. But the entry just referred to was subse¬ 
quent by several months to that visit, and we may with confidence 
assume that no freethinker of the eighteenth century would pro¬ 
nounce the austerities of a Communion Sunday in a Calvinist town 
an edifying spectacle. It is probable that his relinquishing of dog¬ 
matic faith was gradual, and for a time unconscious. It was an 
age of tepid belief, except among the Nonjurors and Methodists; 
and with neither of these groups could he have had the least sym¬ 
pathy. His acquaintance with Hume, and his partiality for 'the 
writings of Bayle, are more probable sources of a change of senti¬ 
ment which was in a way predestined by natural bias and cast of 
mind. Any occasion would serve to precipitate the result. In 
any case, this result had been attained some years before the pub¬ 
lication of the first volume of the Decline and Fall, in 1776. Re¬ 
ferring to his preparatory studies for the execution of that work, 
he says, “ As I believed, and as I still believe, that the propaga¬ 
tion of the Gospel and the triumph of the Church are inseparably 
connected with the decline of the Roman monarchy, I weighed the 
causes and effects of the revolution, and contrasted the narratives 
and apologies of the Christians themselves with the glances of 
candour or enmity which the pagans have cast on the rising sects. 
The Jewish and heathen testimonies, as they are collected and 
illustrated by Dr. Lardner, directed without superseding my search 
of the originals, and in an ample dissertation on the miraculous 
darkness of the Passion I privately drew my conclusions from the 
silence of an unbelieving age.” Here we have the argument which 
concludes the sixteenth chapter distinctly announced. But the 
previous travail of spirit is not indicated. Gibbon has marked 
with precision the stages of his conversion to Romanism. But the 
following chapters of the history of his religious opinions he has 
not written, or he has suppressed them, and we can only vaguely 
guess their outline. J & 3 


GIBBON. 


45 


CHAPTER VI. 

LIFE TN LONDON.—PARLIAMENT.—THE BOARD OF TRADE.—THE 
DECLINE AND FALL.—MIGRATION TO LAUSANNE. 

Gibbon’s settlement in London as master in his own house did 
not come too soon. A few more years of anxiety and dependence, 
such as he had passed of late with his father in the country, would 
probably have dried up the spring of literary ambition and made 
him miss his career. He had no tastes to fit him for a country 
life. The pursuit of farming only pleased him in Virgil’s Georgies. 
He seems neither to have liked nor to have needed exercise, and 
English rural sports had no charms for him. “ I never handled a 
gun, I seldom mounted a horse, and my philosophic walks were 
soon terminated by a shady bench, where I was long detained by 
the sedentary amusement of reading or meditation.” He was a 
born citadin. “Never,” he writes to his friend Holroyd', “never 
pretend to allure me by painting in odious colours the dust of 
London. I love the dust, and whenever I move into the Weald it 
is to visit you, and not your trees.” His ideal was to devote the 
morning, commencing early—at seven, say—to study, and the af¬ 
ternoon and evening to society and recreation, not “disdaining 
the innocent amusement of a game at cards.” And this plan of a 
happy life he very fairly realised in his little house in Bentinck 
Street. The letters that we have of his relating to this period are 
buoyant with spirits and self-congratulation at his happy lot. He 
writes to his stepmother that he is every day more satisfied with 
his present mode of life, which he always believed was most cal¬ 
culated to make him happy. The stable and moderate stimulus 
of congenial society, alternating with study, was what he liked. 
The excitement and dissipation of a town life, which purchase 
pleasure to-day at die expense of fatigue and disgust to-morrow, 
were as little to his taste as the amusements of the country. In 
1772, when he settled in London, he was young in years, but he 
was old in tastes, and he enjoyed himself with the complacency 
often seen in healthy old men. “ My library,” he writes to Hol¬ 
royd in 1773, “ Kensington Gardens, and a few parties with new 
acquaintance, among whom I reckon Goldsmith and Sir Joshua 
Reynolds,” (poor Goldsmith was to die the year following), “ fill 
up my time, and the monster ennui preserves a very respectful 
distance. By the by, your friends Batt, Sir John Russell, and 


GIBBON. 


4 6 


Lascelles dined with me one day before they set off: for I some' 
times give the prettiest little dinner in the world.” One can im¬ 
agine Gibbon, the picture of plumpness and content, doing the 
honours of his modest household. Still he was never prominent 
in society, even after the publication of his great work had made 
him famous. Lord Sheffield says that his conversation was supe¬ 
rior to his writings, and in a circle of intimate friends it is proba¬ 
ble that this was true. But in the free encounter of wit and argu¬ 
ment, the same want of readiness that made him silent in parlia¬ 
ment would most likely restrict his conversational power. It may 
be doubted if there is a striking remark or saying of his on record. 
His name occurs in Boswell, but nearly always as a persotia muta. 
Certainly the arena where Johnson and Burke encountered each 
other was not fitted to bring out a shy and not very quick man. 
Against Johnson he manifestly harboured a sort of grudge, and if 
he ever felt the weight of Ursa Major’s paw it is not surprising. 

He rather oddly preserved an instance of his conversational 
skill, as if aware that he would not easily get credit for it. The 
scene was in Paris. “ At the table of my old friend M. de Fonce- 
magne, I was involved in a dispute with the Abbd de Mably . . . 
As I might be partial in my own cause, I shall transcribe the 
words of an unknown critic. ‘You were, my dear Theodon, at M. 
de Foncemagne’s house, when the Abbd de Mably and Mr. Gibbon 
dined there along with a number of guests. The conversation 
ran almost entirely on history. The Abbe, being a profound pol¬ 
itician, turned it while at dessert on the administration of affairs, 
and as by genius and temper, and the habit of admiring Livy, he 
values only the republican system, he began to boast of the excel¬ 
lence of republics, being well persuaded that the learned English¬ 
man would approve of all he said and admire the profunditv of 
genius that had enabled a Frenchman to discover all these advan¬ 
tages. But Mr. Gibbon, knowing by experience the inconve¬ 
niences of a popular government, was not at all of his opinion, and 
generously took up the defence of monarchy. The Abbd wished 
to convince him out of Livy, and by some arguments drawn from 
Plutarch in favour of the Spartans. Mr. Gibbon, being endowed 
with a most excellent memory, and having all events present to 
his mind, soon got the command of the conversation. The Abbe 
grew angry, they lost possession of themselves, and said hard 
things of each other. The Englishman retaining his native cool¬ 
ness, watched for. his advantages, and pressed the Abbe with in¬ 
creasing success in proportion as he was more disturbed by pas¬ 
sion. The conversation grew warmer, and was broken off by M. 
de roncemagne’s rising from table and passing into the parlour, 
where no one was tempted to renew it.” 

But if not brilliant in society, he was very rtpandu , and was 
welcomed in the best circles. He was a member of Boodle’s, 
Vlnte s, Brooks s, and Almack’s,* and “there were few persons 


r t ' 1 ? asseiT ’l ),v ->'oom of that name, but a gaming-club where the play was hieh 

[ find no evidence that Gibbon ever yielded to the prevalent passion for gambliij 2 


GIBBON ,i 


47 

in the literary or political world to whom he was a stranger.” It 
is to be regretted that the best sketch of him at this period bor¬ 
ders on caricature. “The learned Gibbon,” says Colman, “was a 
curious counterbalance to the learned (may I not say the less 
learned) Johnson. Their manners and tastes, both in writing and 
conversation, were as different as their habiliments. On the day 
1 first sat down with Johnson in his rusty-brown suit and his black 
worsted stockings, Gibbon was placed opposite to me in a suit of 
flowered velvet, with a bag and sword. Each had his measured 
phraseology, and Johnson’s famous parallel between Dryden and 
Tope might be loosely parodied in reference to himself and Gib¬ 
bon. Johnson’s style was grand, and Gibbon’s elegant: the state¬ 
liness. of the former was sometimes pedantic, and the latter was 
occasionally finical. Johnson marched to kettledrums and trum¬ 
pets, Gibbon moved to flutes and hautboys. Johnson hewed pas¬ 
sages through the Alps, while Gibbon levelled walks through parks 
and gardens. Mauled as I had been by Johnson, Gibbon poured 
balm upon my bruises by condescending once or twice in the 
course of the evening to talk with me. The great historian was 
light and playful, suiting his matter to the capacity of the boy: 
but it was done more suo —still his mannerism prevailed, still he 
tapped his snuff-box, still he smirked and smiled, and rounded his 
periods with the same air of good-breeding, as if he were convers¬ 
ing with men. His mouth, mellifluous as Plato's, was a round 
hole nearly in the centre of his visage.” (Quoted in Croker’s 
Boswell.') 

Now and then he even joins in a masquerade, “the finest thing 
ever seen,” which costs two thousand guineas. But the chief 
charm of it to him seems to have been the pleasure that it gave to 
his Aunt Porten. These little vanities are however quite super¬ 
ficial, and are never allowed to interfere with work. 

Now indeed he was no loiterer. In three years after his settle¬ 
ment in London he had produced the first volume of the Declhie 
and Fall: an amount of diligence which will not be underrated by 
those who appreciate the vast difference between commencing and 
continuing an undertaking of that magnitude. “ At the outset,” 
he says, “ all was dark and doubtful; even the title of the work, 
the true aera of the decline and fall of the empire, the limits of the 
Introduction, the division of the chapters, and the order of the 
narrative,—and I was often tempted to cast away the labour of 
seven years; ’’—alternations no doubt of hope and despair familiar 
to every sincere and competent student. But he had taken the 
best and only reliable means of securing himself from the danger 
of these fluctuations of spirit. He finished his reading and prep¬ 
aration before he began to write, and when he at last put pen to 
paper his course lay open before him, with no fear of sudden and 
disquieting stoppages arising from imperfect knowledge and need 
of further inquiry. It is a pity that we cannot follow the elabora¬ 
tion of the work in detail. That portion of his Memoirs in which 
he speaks of it is very short and fragmentary, and the defect is not 


GIBBON. 


48 

supplied by his letters. He seems to have worked with singular 
ease and mastery of his subject, and never to have felt his task as 
a strain or a fatigue. Even his intimate friends were not aware 
that he was engaged on a work of j-uch magnitude, and it is amus¬ 
ing to see his'friend Holroyd warn him against a hasty and im¬ 
mature publication when he learned that the book was in the press. 
He had apparently heard little of it before. This alone would 
show with what ease and smoothness Gibbon must have worked. 
He had excellent health—a strange fact after his sickly childhood; 
society unbent his mind instead of distracting it; his stomach was 
perfect—perhaps too good, as about this time he began to be ad¬ 
monished by the gout. He never seems to have needed change. 
“ Sufficient for the summer is the evil thereof, viz., one distant 
country excursion.” There was an extraordinary difference in this 
respect between the present age and those which went before it; 
restlessness and change of scene have become almost a necessity 
of life with us, whereas our ancestors could continue healthy and 
happy for months and years without stirring from home. What is 
there to explain the change ? We must not pretend that we work 
harder than they did.* However, Gibbon was able to keep him¬ 
self in good condition with his long spell of work in the morning, 
and his dinner-parties at home or elsewhere in the afternoon, and 
to have kept at home as much as he could. Whenever he went 
away to the country, it was on invitations which he could not well 
refuse. The result was a leisurely, unhasting fulness of achieve¬ 
ment, calm stretches of thorough and contented work, which have 
left their marks on the Decline and Fall. One of its charms is a 
constant good humor and complacency; not a sign is visible that 
the writer is pressed for time, or wants to get his performance out 
of hand; but, on the contrary, a calm lingering over details, 
sprightly asides in the notes, which the least hurry would have 
suppressed or passed by, and a general impression conveyed of 
thorough enjoyment in the immensity of the labour. 

One would have liked to see this elaboration more dearly, to 
have been allowed a glimpse into his workshop while he was so 
engaged.. Unfortunately the editor of his journals has selected 
the. relatively unimportant records of his earlier studies, and left 
us in the dark as regards this far more interesting period. He 
was such an indefatigable diarist that it is unlikely that he neglected 
to keep a journal in this crisis of his studies. But it has not been 
published, and it may have been destroyed. All that we have is 
this short paragraph in his Memoirs :— 

“ The classics, as low as Tacitus and the younger Pliny and Juvenal, 
were my old and familiar companions. I insensibly plunged into the 
ocean or the Augustan history, and in the descending series I investigated 
with my pen almost always in my hand, the original records, both Greek 



GIBBON ; 


49 


and Latin, from Dion Cassius to Ammianus Marccllinus, from the reign 
of Trajan to the last age of the Western Caesars. The subsidiary rays of 
medals and inscriptions of geography and chronology were thrown on 
their proper objects, and I applied the collections of Tillemont to fix and 
arrange within my reach the loose and scattered atoms of historical in¬ 
formation. Through the darkness of the middle ages I explored my way 
in the Annals and Antiquities of Italy of the learned Muratori, and dil¬ 
igently compared them with the parallel or transverse lines of Sigonius 
and Maffei, Baronius and Pagi, till I almost grasped the ruins of Rome 
in the fourteenth century, without suspecting that this final chapter must 
be attained by the labour of six quartos and twenty years.” 

When the time for composition arrived, he showed a fastidious¬ 
ness which was full of good augury. “ Three times did I compose 
the first chapter, and twice the second and third, before I was 
tolerably satisfied with their effect.” His hand grew firmer as he 
advanced. But the two final chapters interposed a long delay, and 
needed “ three successive revisals to reduce them from a volume 
to their present size. Gibbon spent more time over his first volume 
than over any one of the five which followed it. To these he 
devoted almost regularly two years apiece, more or less, whereas 
the first cost him three years—so disproportionately difficult is the 
start in matters of this kind. 

While engaged in the composition of the first volume, he be¬ 
came a member of Parliament. One morning at half-past seven, 
“as he was destroying an army of barbarians,” he heard a double 
rap at his door. It was a friend who came to inquire if he was 
desirous of entering the House of Commons. The answer may 
be imagined, and he took his seat as member for the borough of 
Liskeard after the general election in 1774. 

Gibbon’s political career is the side of his history from which a 
friendly biographer would most readily turn away. Not that it was 
exceptionally ignoble or self-seeking if tried by the standard of the 
time, but it*was altogether commonplace and unworthy of him. 
The fact that he never even once opened his mouth in the House 
is not in itself blameworthy, though disappointing in a man of his 
power. It was indeed laudable enough if he had nothing to say. 
But why had he nothing to say ? His excuse is timidity and want 
of readiness, We may reasonably assume that the cause lay deeper. 
With his mental vigour he would soon have overcome such ob¬ 
stacles if he had really wished and tried to overcome them. The 
fact is that he never tried because he never wished. It is a singular 
thin»• to say of such a man, but nevertheless true, that he had no 
taste or capacity whatever for politics. He lived at one of the most 
exciting periods of our history; he assisted at debates in which 
constitutional and imperial questions of the highest moment were 
discussed by masters of eloquence and state policy, and he hardly 
appears to have been aware of the fact. It was not that he de¬ 
spised politics as Walpole affected to do, or that he regarded party 
struggles as “ barbarous and absurd faction,” as Hume did ; still less 
did he pass by them with the supercilious indifference of a mystic 

'1 


GIBBON. 


5° 

whose eyes are fixed on the individual spirit of man as the one 
spring of good and evil. He never rose to the level of the ordinary 
citizen or even partisan, who takes an exaggerated view perhaps of 
the importance of the politics of the day, but who at any rate there¬ 
by shows a sense of social solidarity and the claims of civic com¬ 
munion. He called himself a Whig, but he had no zeal for Whig 
principles. He voted steadily with Lora North, and quite approved 
of taxing and coercing America into slavery ; but he had no high 
notions of the royal prerogative, and was lukewarm in this as in 
everything. With such absence of passion one might have expected 
that he would be at least shrewd and sagacious in his judgments 
on politics. But he is nothing of the kind. In his familiar letters 
he reserves generally a few lines for parliamentary gossip, amid 
chat about the weather and family business. He never approaches 
to a broad survey of policy, or express serious and settled convic¬ 
tions on home or foreign affairs. Throughout the American war 
he never seems to have really made up his mind on the nature of 
the struggle, and the momentous issues that it involved. Favour¬ 
able news puts him in high spirits, which are promptly cooled by 
the announcement of reverses ; not that he ever shows any real 
anxiety or despondency about the commonwealth. His opinions 
on the subject are at the mercy of the last mail. It is disappoint¬ 
ing to find an elegant trifler like Horace Walpole not only far more 
discerning in his appreciation of such a crisis, but also far more 
patriotically sensitive as to the wisdom of the means of meeting it, 
than the historian of Rome. Gibbon’s tone often amounts to levity, 
and he chronicles the most serious measures with an unconcern 
really surprising. “ In a few days we stop the ports of New Eng¬ 
land. I cannot write volumes : but I am more and more convinced 
that with firmness all may go well: yet I sometimes doubt.” (Feb¬ 
ruary 8, 1775). “Something will be done this year; but in the 
spring the force of the country will be exerted to the utmost: 
Scotch Highlanders, Irish Papists, Hanoverians, Canadians, 
Indians, &c., will all in various shapes be employed.” (August 1, 
1775). “ What think you of the season, of Siberia is it not ? A 

pleasant campaign in America.” (January 29, 1776). At precisely 
the same time the sagacious coxcomb of Strawberry Hill was 
writing thus : “ The times are indeed very serious. Pacification 
with America is not the measure adopted. More regiments are 
ordered thither, and to-morrow a plan, I fear equivalent to a declar¬ 
ation of war, is to be laid before both Houses. They are bold 
ministers methinks who does not hesitate on civil war, in .which 
victory may bring ruin, and disappointment endanger their heads 
. . . Acquisition alone can make burdens palatable, and in a 

war with our own colonies we must inflict instead of acquiring 
them, and we cannot recover them without undoing them. I am 
still to learn wisdom and experience, if these things are not so.” 
(Letter to Mann, January 25, 1775). “A war with our colonies, 
which is now declared, is a proof how much influence jargon has 
on human actions. A war on our own trade is popular.” (Feb- 



GIBBON. 


51 

ruary 15, 1775). “ The war with America goes on briskly, that is 

as far as voting goes. A great majority in both houses is as brave 
as a mob ducking a pick-pocket. They flatter themselves they 
shall terrify the colonies into submission in three months, and are 
amazed to hear that there is no such probability. They might as well 
have excommunicated them, and left it to the devil to put the sen¬ 
tence into execution.” (February 18, 1775). Not only is Walpole’s 
judgments wiser, but the elements of a wise judgment were present 
to him in a way in which they were not so to Gibbon. When the 
latter does attempt a forecast, he shows, as might be expected, as 
little penetration of the future as appreciation of the present. 
Writing from Paris on August 11, 1777, when all French society 
was ablaze with enthusiasm for America, and the court just On the 
point of yielding to the current, he is under no immediate appre¬ 
hensions of a war with France, and “ would not be surprised if next 
summer the French were to lend their cordial assistance to Eng¬ 
land as the weaker party.” The emptiness of his letter as regards 
home politics perhaps admits of a more favourable explanation, 
and may be owing to the careful suppression by their editor, Lord 
Sheffield, of everything of real interest. It is impossible to esti¬ 
mate the weight of this consideration, but it may be great. Still 
we have a sufficient number of his letters to be able to say that on 
the whole they are neither thoughtful nor graphic: they give us 
neither pictures of events nor insight into the times. It must be, 
however, remembered that Gibbon greatly disliked letter-writing, 
and never wrote unless he was obliged. 

It was no secret that Gibbon wanted a place under government. 
Moderate as his establishment seems to have been, it was more 
expensive than he could afford, and he looked, not without war¬ 
rant, to a supplement of income from one of the rich windfalls 
which in that time of sinecures were wont to refresh the spirits of 
sturdy supporters of administration. He had influential friends, 
and even relatives, in and near the government, and but for his 
parliamentary nullity he would probably have been provided with a 
comfortable berth at an early period. But his “ sincere and silent 
vote ” was not valuable enough to command a high price from his 
patrons. Once only was he able to help them with his pen, when 
he drew up, at the request of Lords Thurlow and Weymouth, his 
Mi moire Justificatif, in French, in which “he vindicated against 
the French manifesto the justice of the British arms.” It was a 
service worthy of a small fee, which no doubt he received. He 
had to wait till 1779, when he had been five years in Parliament, 
before his cousin Mr. Eliot, and his friend Wedderburne, the 
Attorney-General, were able to find him a post as one of the Lords 
Commissioners of Trade and Plantations. The Board of Irade, of 
which he became one of the eight members, survives in mortal 
memory only from being embalmed in the bright amber of one of 
Burke’s great speeches. “This board, Sir, has had both its 
original formation and its regeneration in a job. In a job it was 
conceived, and in a job its mother brought it forth. . . . This 



GIBBON. 


5 2 

board is a sort of temperate bed of influence: a sort of genhy 
ripening hothouse, where eight members of Parliament receive 
salaries of a thousand a year for a certain given time, in order to 
mature at a proper season a claim to two thousand, granted for 
doing less ” (Speech on Economical Reform). Gibbon, with entire 
good humour, acknowledges the justice of Burke’s indictment, and 
says he was “heard with delight, even by those whose existence he 
proscribed.” After all, he only enjoyed the emolument of his office 
for three years, and he places that emolument at a lower figure than 
Burke did. He could not have received more than between two 
and three thousand pounds of public money; and when we con¬ 
sider what manner of men have fattened on the national purse, it 
would be churlish to grudge that small sum to the historian of the 
Decline and Fall. The misfortune is that, reasonably or other¬ 
wise, doubts were raised as to Gibbon’s complete straightforward¬ 
ness and honorable adhesion to party ties in accepting office. He 
says himself: “ My acceptance of a place provoked some of the 
leaders of opposition with whom I had lived in habits of intimacy, 
and I was most unjustly accused of deserting a party in which I 
had never enlisted.” There is certainly no evidence that those 
who were most qualified to speak, those who gave him the place 
and reckoned on his vote, ever complained of want of allegiance. 
On the other hand, Gibbon’s own letter to Edward Eliot, accepting 
the place, betrays a somewhat uneasy conscience. He owns that 
he was far from approving all the past measures of the adminis¬ 
tration, even some of those in which he himself had silently con¬ 
curred ; that he saw many capital defects in the characters of some 
of the present ministers, and was sorry that in so alarming a situ¬ 
ation of public affairs the country had not the assistance of several 
able and honest men who were now in opposition. Still, for 
various reasons, he did not consider himself in any way implicated, 
and rather suspiciously concludes with an allusion to his pecuniary 
difficulties and a flourish. “ The addition of the salary which is 
now offered will make my situation perfectly easy, but I hope that 
you will do me the justice to believe that my mind could not be so 
unless I were conscious of the rectitude of my conduct.” 

The strongest charge against Gibbon in reference to this mat¬ 
ter is asserted to come from his friend Fox, in this odd form. “ In 
June 1781, Mr. Fox’s library came to be sold. Amongst his other 
books the first volume of Mr. Gibbon’s history was brought to the 
hammer. In the blank leaf of this was a note in the handwriting 
of Mr. Fox, stating a remarkable declaration of our historian at a 
well-known tavern in Pall Mall, and contrasting it with Mr. Gibbon’s 
political conduct afterwards. ‘ The author,’ it observed, ‘ at Brooks’s 
said that there was no salvation for this country until six heads of 
the principal persons in administration’ (Lord North beino- then 
prime minister) ‘ were laid upon the table. Yet,’ as the observa¬ 
tion added, ‘ eleven days afterwards this same gentleman accepted 
a place of a lord of trade under these very ministers, and has acted 
with them ever since.’” It is impossible to tell what amount of 


GIBBON. 


53 

truth there is in this story, and not very important to inquire. It 
rests on the authority of a strong personal enemy, and the cordial 
intimacy which ever subsisted between Gibbon and Fox seems to 
show that it was mere calumny. Perhaps the fact that Gibbon had 
really no opinions in politics may have led persons of opposite par¬ 
ties to think that he agreed with them more than he did, and when 
he merely followed his own interest, they may have inferred that 
he was deserting their principles. After losing his post on the 
Board of Trade he still hoped for Government employ, “either a 
secure seat at the Board of Customs or Excise,” or in a diplomatic 
capacity. He was disappointed. If Lord Sheffield is to be be¬ 
lieved, it was his friend Fox who frustrated his appointment as 
secretary of embassy at Paris, when he had been already named to 
that office. 

The way in which Gibbon acted and afterwards spoke in refer¬ 
ence to the celebrated Coalition gives perhaps the best measure of 
his political calibre. He voted among the rank and file of Lord 
North’s followers for the Coalition with meek subserviency. He 
speaks of a “principle of gratitude ” which actuated him on this oc¬ 
casion. Lord North had given him his seat, and if a man’s conscience 
allows him to think rather of his patron than of his country, there 
is nothing to be said, except that his code of political ethics is low. 
We may admit that his vote was pledged ; but there is also no 
doubt that any gratitude that there was in the matter was stimu¬ 
lated by a lively sense of favours to come. The Portland ministry 
had not been long in office when he wrote in the following terms 
to his friend UeVverdun : “You have not forgotten that I went 
into Parliament without patriotism and without ambition, and that 
all my views tended to the convenient and respectable place of a 
lord of trade. This situation I at length obtained. I possessed it 
for three years, from 1779 to 1782, and the net produce, which 
amounted to 750/. sterling, augmented my income to my wants and 
desires. But in the spring of last year the storm burst over our 
heads. Lord North was overthrown, your humble servant turned 
out, and even the Board of Trade, of which I was a member, abol¬ 
ished and broken up for ever by Mr. Burke’s reform. To complete 
my misfortunes, I still remain a member of the Lower House. At 
the end of the last Parliament, Mr. Eliot withdrew his nomination. 
But the favour of Lord North facilitated my re-election, and grati¬ 
tude imposed on me the duty of making available for his service 
the rights which I held in part from him. That winter we fought 
under°the allied standards of Lord North and Mr. Fox: we tri¬ 
umphed over Lord Shelburne and the peace, and my friend (i.e. 
Lord North) remounted his steed in the quality of a secretary of 
state. Now he can easily say to me, ‘ It was a great deal for me, 
it was nothing for you ; ’ and in spite of the strongest assurances, 
I have too much reason to allow me to have much faith. With great 
genius and very respectable talents, he has now neither the title 
nor the credit of prime minister; more active colleagues carry off 
the most savoury morsels which their voracious creatures immedi- 



GIBBON. 


54 

ately devour; our misfortunes and reforms have diminished the 
number of favours ; either through pride or through indolence I am 
but a bad suitor, and if at last I obtain something, it may perhaps 
be on the eve of a fresh revolution, which will in an instant snatch 
from me that which has cost me so many cares and pains.” 

Such a letter speaks for itself. Gibbon might well.say that he 
entered parliament without patriotism and without ambition. The 
only redeeming feature is the almost cynical frankness with which 
he openly regards politics from a personal point of view. However, 
it may be pleaded that the letter was written to a bosom friend at 
a moment of great depression, and when Gibbon’s pecuniary diffi¬ 
culties were pressing him severely. The Coalition promised him a 
place, and that was enough; the contempt for all principle which 
had brought it about was not thought of. But even this minute 
excuse does not apply to the way in which, years after, when he 
was in comfort at Lausanne, he refers to the subject in his Memoirs. 
The light in which the Coalition deserved to be regarded was clear 
by that time. Yet he speaks of it, not only without blame or re¬ 
gret, but contrives to cast suspicion on the motives of those who i 
were disgusted by it, and bestowed their allegiance elsewhere. 

“ It is not the purpose of this narrative to expatiate on the public or j 
secret history of the times : the schism which followed the death of the | 
Marquis of Rockingham, the appointment of the Earl of Shelbourne, the I 
resignation of Mr. Fox and his famous coalition with Lord North. But I 
may assert with some degree of assurance that in their political conflict 1 
those great antagonists had never felt any personal animosity to each other, ' 
that their reconciliation was easy and sincere, and that their friendship ] 
has never been clouded by the shadow of suspicion or jealousy. The I 
most violent or venal of their respective followers embraced this fair occa- J 
sion of revolt, but their alliance still commanded a majority of the House 1 
of Commons, the peace was censured. Lord Shelbourne resigned, and the 1 
two friends knelt on the same cushion to take the oath of secretary of I 
state. From a principle of gratitude I adhered to the Coalition ; my vote 1 
was counted in the day of battle, but I was overlooked in the division of 
the spoil.” 

From this we learn that it was only the violent ancl the venal 
who disapproved of the Coalition. One would like to know how 
Gibbon explained the fact that at the general election of T784 no 
less than one hundred and sixty of the supporters of the Coalition 
lost their seats, and that Fox’s political reputation was all but ir¬ 
retrievably ruined from this time forward. 

Meanwhile he had not neglected his own proper work. The 
first volume of his history was published in February, 1776. It 
derived, he says, “ more credit from the name of the shop than 
irom that of the author.” In the first instance he intended to 
print only five hundred copies, but the number was doubled by the 
prophetic taste ” of his printer, Mr. Strahan. The book was re¬ 
ceived with a burst of applause—it was a succes fou . The first im¬ 
pression was exhausted in a few days, and a second and third edi- 




GIB BO N- 


55 

tion were scarcely adequate to the demand. The wiser few were 
as warm in their eulogies as the general public. Hume declared 
that if he had not been personally acquainted with the author, he 
should have been surprised by such a performance coming from any 
Englishman in that age. Dr. Robertson, Adam Ferguson, and 
Horace Walpole joined in the chorus. Walpole betrays an amus¬ 
ing mixture of admiration and pique at not having found the author 
out before. “ I know him a little, and never suspected the extent 
of his talents ; for he is perfectly modest, or I want penetration, 
which I know too ; but I intend to know him a great deal more.” 
He oddly enough says that Gibbon was the “son of a foolish alder¬ 
man,” which shows at least how little the author was known in the 
great world up to this time. Now, however, society was determined 
to know more of him, the surest proof, not of merit, but of success. 
It must have been a rather intoxicating moment, but Gibbon had a 
cool head not easily turned. It would be unfair not to add that he 
had something much better, a really warm and affectionate regard 
for old friends, the best preservative against the fumes of flattery 
and sudden fame. Holroyd, Deyverdun, Madame Necker were 
more to him than all the great people with whom he now became 
acquainted. Necker and his wife came over from Paris and paid 
him a long visit in Bentinck Street, when his laurels were just fresh. 
“ 1 live with her,” he writes, “just as I used to do twenty years ago, 
laugh at her Paris varnish, and oblige her to become a simple rea¬ 
sonable Suissesse. The man, who might read English husbands 
lessons of proper and dutiful behaviour, is a sensible, good-natured 
creature.” The next year he returned the visit to Paris. His 
fame had preceded him, and he received the cordial but discrim¬ 
inating welcome which the a?icien regime at that time specially re¬ 
served for gens d'esprit. Madame du Deffand writes to Walpole, 
“ Mr. Gibbon has the greatest success here ; it is quite a struggle 
to get him.” He did not deny himself a rather sumptuous style of 
living while in Paris. Perhaps the recollection of the unpleasant 
effect of his English clothes and the long waists of the French on 
his former visit dwelt in his mind, for now, like Walpole, he pro¬ 
cured a-new outfit at once. “ After decking myself out with silks 
and silver, the ordinary establishment of coach, lodgings, servants, 
eating, and pocket expenses, does not exceed 60/. per month. Yet 
I have two footmen in handsome liveries behind my coach, and my 
apartment is hung with damask.” 

The remainder of his life in London has nothing important. 
He persevered assiduously with his history, and had two more 
quartos ready in 1781. They were received with less enthusiasm 
than the first, although they were really superior. Gibbon was 
rather too modestly inclined to agree with the public and “to be¬ 
lieve that, especially in the beginning, they were more prolix and 
less entertaining ” than the previous volume. He also wasted some 
weeks on his vindication of the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of 
that volume, which had excited a host of feeble and ill-mannered 
attacks. His defence was complete, and in excellent temper. But 





GIBBON. 


5 6 

the piece has no permanent value. His assailants were so ignor¬ 
ant and silly that they gave no scope for a ‘great controversial 
reply. Neither perhaps did the subject admit of it. A literary 
war generally makes people think of Bentley’s incomparable^Y’^#/- 
aris. But that was almost a unique occasion and victory in the 
history of letters. Bentley himself, the most pugnacious of men, 
never found such another. 

And so the time glided by, till we come to the year 1783. 
Lord North had resigned office, the Board of Trade was abolished, 
and Gibbon had lost his convenient salary. The outlook was not 
pleasant. The seat on the Board of Customs of Excise with which 
his hopes had been for a time kept up, receded into a remote dis¬ 
tance, and he came to the conclusion “ that the reign of pensions 
and sinecures was at an end.” It was clearly necessary to take 
some important step in the way of retrenchment. After he had 
lost his official income, his expenses exceeded his revenue by 
something like four hundred pounds. A less expensive style of 
living in London never seems to have presented itself as an alter¬ 
native. So, like many an Englishman before and since, he re¬ 
solved to go abroad to economise. 

His old friend Deyverdun was now settled in a comfortable 
house at Lausanne, overlooking the Lake of Geneva. They had 
not met for eight years. But the friendship had begun a quarter 
of a century before, in the old days when Gibbon was a boarder in 
Pavillard’s house, and the embers of old associations only wanted 
stirring to make them shoot up into flame. In a moment of ex¬ 
pansion Gibbon wrote off a warm and eager letter to his friend, 
setting forth his unsatisfactory position, and his wish and even 
necessity to change it. He gradually and with much delicacy dis¬ 
closes his plan, that he and Deyverdun, both new old bachelors, 
should combine their solitary lives in a common household and 
carry out an old project, often discussed in younger days, of living 
together. “You live in a charming house. J see from here my 
apartment, the rooms we shall share with one another, our table, 
our walks. But such a marriage is worthless unless it suits both 
parties, and 1 easily feel that circumstances, new tastes, and con¬ 
nections may frustrate a design which appeared charming in the 
distance. To settle my mind and to avoid regrets, you must be as 
frank as I have been, and give me a true picture, external and in¬ 
ternal, of George Deyverdun.” 

This letter, written in fluent and perfect French, is one of the 
best that we have of Gibbon. Deyverdun answered promptly, and 
met his friend’s advances with at least equal warmth. The few 
letters that have been preserved of his connected with this subject 
give a highly favourable idea of his mind and character, and show 
he was quite worthy of the long and constant attachment that 
Gibbon felt for him. He cannot express the delight he has felt at* 
his friend’s proposal; by the rarest piece of good fortune, it so 
happens that he himself is in a somewhat similar position of urn 
certainty and difficulty; a year ago Gibbon’s letter would have 


GIBBON. 


57 

given him pleasure, now it offers assistance and support. After a 
few details concerning the tenant who occupies a portion of his 
house, he proceeds to urge Gibbon to carry out the project he had 
suggested, to break loose from parliament and politics, for which he 
was not fit, and to give himself up to the charms of study and 
friendship. “ Call to mind, my dear friend,” he goes on, “ that I 
saw you enter parliament with regret, and 1 think I was only too 
good a prophet. I am sure that career has caused you more pri¬ 
vations than joys, more pains than pleasures. Ever since I have 
known you I have been convinced that your happiness lay in your 
study and in society, and that any path which led you elsewhere 
was a departure from happiness.” Through nine pages of gentle 
and friendly eloquence Deyverdun pursues his argument to induce 
his friend to clinch the bargain. “ I advise you not only not to 
solicit a place, but to refuse one if it were offered to you. Would 
a thousand a year make up to you for the loss of “five days a 
week? .... By making this retreat to Switzerland, besides the 
■ beauty of the country and the pleasures of its society, you will ac¬ 
quire two blessings which you have lost, liberty and competence. 
You will also be useful, your works will continue to enlighten us, 
and, independently of your talents, the man of honour and re¬ 
finement is never useless.” He then skilfully exhibits the attrac¬ 
tions he has to offer. “ You used to like my house and garden ; 
what would you do now ? On the first floor, which looks on the de¬ 
clivity of Ouchy, I have fitted up an apartment which is enough for 
me. I have a servant’s room, two salons , two cabinets. On a 
level with the terrace two other salons , of which one serves as a 
dining-room in summer, and the other a drawing-room for com¬ 
pany. I have arranged three more rooms between the house and 
the coachhouse, so that I can offer you all the large apartment, 
which consists actually of eleven rooms, great and small, looking 
east and south, not splendidly furnished, I allow, but with a certain 
elegance which I hope you will like. The terrace is but little 
altered .... it is lined from end to end with boxes of orange- 
trees. The vine-trellis has prospered, and extends nearly to the 
end. I have purchased the vineyard below the garden, and in 
front of the house made it into a lawn, which is watered by the 
water of the fountain .... In a word, strangers come to see the 
place, and in spite of my pompous description of it I think you will 
like it .... If you come, you will find a tranquillity which you 
cannot have in London, and a friend who has not passed a single 
day without thinking of you, and who, in spite of his defects, his 
foibles, and his inferiority, is still one of the companions who suits 
you best.” 

More letters followed from both sides in a similar strain. Yet 
Gibbon quailed before a final resolution. His aunt, Mrs. Porten, 
his mother, Mrs. Gibbon, his friend, Lord Sheffield, all joined in 
deprecating his voluntary exile. “ That is a nonsensical scheme,” 
said the latter, “you have got into your head of returning to 
Lausanne—a pretty fancy ; you remember how much you liked it 





GIBBON. 


5* 

in your youth, but now you have seen more of the world, and if you 
were to try it again you would find yourself woefully disappointed.” 
Deyverdun, with complete sympathy, begged him not to be in too 
great a hurry to decide on a course which he himself desired 
so much. “ I agree with you,” he wrote to Gibbon, “ that this is 
a sort of marriage, but I could never forgive myself if I saw you 
dissatisfied in the sequel, and in a position to reproach me.” 
Gibbon felt it was a case demanding decision of character, and he 
came to a determination with a promptitude and energy not usual 
with him. He promised Deyverdun in the next letter an ulti¬ 
matum, stating whether he meant to go or to stay, and a week after 
he wrote, “ I go.” He had prudently refrained from consulting 
Lord Sheffield during this critical period, knowing that his certain 
disapprobation of the scheme would only complicate matters and 
render decision more difficult. Then he wrote, “ I have given 
Deyverdun my word of honor to be at Lausanne at the beginning 
of October, and no power of persuasion can divert me from this 
irrevocable resolution, which I am every day proceeding to exe¬ 
cute.” 

This was no exaggeration. He cancelled the lease of his house 
in Bentinck Street, packed the more necessary portion of his books 
and shipped them for Rouen, and as his postchaise moved over 
Westminster Bridge. “ bade a long farewell to the fumum et opes 
strepitumque Rom<z.” The only real pang he felt in leaving arose 
from the “ silent grief ” of his Aunt Porten, whom he did not hope 
to see again. Nor did he. He started on September 15, 1783, 
slept at Dover, was flattered with the hope of making Calais har¬ 
bour by the same tide in “ three hours and a half, as the wind was 
brisk and fair,” but was driven into Boulogne. He had not a symp¬ 
tom of sea-sickness. Then he went on by easy stages through 
Aire, Bethune, Douay, Cambray, St. Quentin,'La Fere, Laon, 
Rheims, Chalons, St. Dizier, Langres, Besangon, and arrived at 
Lausanne on the 27th. The inns he found more agreeable to the 
palate than to the sight or the smell. At Langres he had an ex¬ 
cellent bed about six feet high from the ground. He beguiled the 
time with Homer and Clarendon, talking with his servant, Caplin, 
and his dog Muff, and sometimes with the French postilions, and 
he found them the least rational of the animals mentioned. 

. He reached his journey’s end, to alight amid a number of 
minor troubles, which to a less easy tempered man would have 
been real annoyances. He found that Deyverdun had reckoned 
without.his host, or rather his tenant, and that they could not have 
possession of the house for several months, so he had to take 
lodgings. Then he sprained his ankle, and this brought on a bad 
attack of the gout, which laid him up completely. However, his 
spirits never gave way. In time his books arrived, and the friends 
got installed in their own house. His satisfaction has then no 
bounds,.with the people, the place, the way of living, and his daily 
companion. We must now leave him for a short space in the en¬ 
joyment of his happiness while we briefly consider the labours of 
the previous ten years 


GIBBON. 


59 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE FIRST THREE VOLUMES OF THE DECLINE AND FALL. 

The historian who is also an artist is exposed to a particular 
drawback from which his brethren in other fields are exempt. 
The mere lapse of time destroys the value and even the fidelity of 
his pictures. In other arts correct colouring and outline remain 
correct, and if they are combined with imaginative power, age 
rather enhances than diminishes their worth. But the historian 
lives under another law. His reproduction of a past age, however 
full and true it may appear to his contemporaries, appears less and 
less true to his successors. The way in which he saw things 
ceases to be satisfactory ; we may admit his accuracy, but we add 
a qualification referring to the time when he wrote, the point of 
view that he occupied. And we feel that what was accurate for 
him is no longer accurate for us. This superannuation of histor¬ 
ical work is not similar to the superseding of scientific work which 
is ever going on, and is the capital test of progress. Scientific 
books become rapidly old-fashioned, because the science to which 
they refer is in constant growth, and a work on chemistry or biol¬ 
ogy is out of date by reason of incompleteness or the discovery of 
unsuspected errors. The scientific side of history, if we allow it 
to have a scientific side, conforms to this rule, and presents no 
singularity. Closer inspection of our materials, the employment 
of the comparative method, occasionally the bringing to light of 
new authorities—all contribute to an increase of real knowledge, 
and historical studies in this respect do not differ from other 
branches of research. But this is not the sole or the chief cause 
of the renovation and transformation constantly needed in historic 
work. That depends on the ever-moving standpoint from which 
the past is regarded, so that society in looking back on its previous 
history never sees it for long together at quite the same angle, 
never sees, we may say, quite the same thing. The past changes 
to us as we move down the stream of time, as a distant mountain 
changes through the windings of the road on which we travel 
away from it. To drop figure and use language now becoming 
familiar, the social organism is in constant growth, and receiving 
new additions, and each new addition causes us to modify our 
view of the whole. The historian, in fact, is engaged in the study 





6 o 


GIBBON’. 


of an unfinished organism, whose development is constantly pre¬ 
senting him with surprises. It is as if the biologist were suddenly 
to come upon new and unheard-of species and families which 
would upset his old classification, or as if the chemist were to find 
his laws of combination replaced by others which were not only 
unknown to him, but which were really new and recent in the 
world. Other inquirers have the whole of the phenomena with 
which their science is concerned before them, and they may ex¬ 
plore them at their leisure. The sociologist has only an instal¬ 
ment, most likely a very small instalment, of the phenomena with 
which his science is concerned before him. They have not yet 
happened, are not yet phenomena, and as they do happen and 
admit of investigation they necessarily lead to constant modifica¬ 
tion of his views and deductions. Not only does he acquire new 
knowledge like other inquirers, but he is constantly having the 
subject-matter from which he derives his knowledge augmented. 
Even in modern times society has thrown out with much sudden¬ 
ness rapid and unexpected developments, of such scope and volume 
that contemporaries have often lost self-possession at the sight of 
them, and wondered if social order could survive. The Reforma¬ 
tion and the French Revolution are cases in point. And what a 
principal part do these two great events always play in any specu¬ 
lations instituted subsequent to them ! How easy it is to see 
whether a writer lived before the Reign of Terror, or after it, from 
his gait and manner of approaching social inquiries ! Is there any 
reason to suppose that such mutations are now at an end ? None. 
The probability, well nigh a certainty, is that metamorphoses of 
the social organism are in store for us which will equal, if they do 
not vastly exceed, anything that the past has offered. 

Considerations of this kind need to be kept in view if we would 
be just in our appreciation of historical writings which have already 
a certain age. It is impossible that a history composed a century 
ago should fully satisfy us now ; but we must beware of blaming 
the writer for his supposed or real shortcomings, till we have ascer¬ 
tained how' far they arose from his personal inadequacy to his task, 
and w^ere not the result of his chronological position. It need not 
be said that this remark does not refer to many books which are 
called histories, but are really contemporary memoirs and original 
authorities subservient to history proper. ' The works of Claren¬ 
don and Burnet, for instance, can never lose a certain value on 
this account. The immortal book which all subsequent genera- 
tions have agreed to call a possession for ever, is the unapproach¬ 
able ideal of this class. But neither dhucydides nor Clarendon 
were historians in the sense in which Gibbon was an historian, 
that is, engaged in the delineation of a remote epoch by the help 
of such materials as have escaped the ravages of time. It is his¬ 
torians like Gibbon who are exposed to the particular unhappiness 
referred to a little way back—that of growing out of date through 
no fault of their own, but through the changed aspect presented 
by the past in consequence of the movement which has brought 


GIBBON. 


6 l 


us to the present. But if this is the field of historical disaster, it 
is also the opportunity of historical genius. In proportion as a 
writer transcends the special limitations of his time, will “age fail 
to wither him.” That he cannot entirely shake off the fetters 
which fasten him to his epoch is manifest. But in proportion as 
his vision is clear, in proportion as he has with singleness of eye 
striven to draw the past with reverent loyalty, will his bondage to 
his own time be loosened, and his work will remain faithful work 
for which due gratitude will not be withheld. 

The sudden and rapid expansion of historic studies in the mid* 
die of the eighteenth century constitutes one of the great epochs in 
literature. Up to the year 1750 no great historical work had ap¬ 
peared in any modern language.* The instances that seem to make 
against this remark will be found to confirm it. They consist of me¬ 
moirs, contemporary documents, in short materials for history, but 
not history itself. From Froissart and De Comines, or even from 
the earlier monastic writers to St. Simon (who was just finishing his 
incomparable Memoirs), history with wide outlook and the con¬ 
ception of social progress and interconnection of events did not 
exist. Yet history in its simple forms is one of the most spon¬ 
taneous of human achievements. Stories of mighty deeds, of the 
prowess and death of heroes, are among the earliest produc¬ 
tions of even semi civilised man—the earliest subjects of epic and 
lyric verse. But this rudimentary form is never more than biogra¬ 
phical. With increasing complexity of social evolution it dies 
away, and history proper, as distinct from annals and chronicle, 
does not arise till circumstances allow of general and synthetic 
views, till societies can be surveyed from a sufficient distance and 
elevation for their movements to be discerned. Thucydides, Livy, 
and Tacitus do not appear till Greece and Rome have reached 
their highest point of homogeneous national life. The tardy dawn 
of history in the modern world was owing to its immense complex¬ 
ity. Materials also were wanting. They gradually emerged out 
of manuscript all over Europe, during what may be called the great 
pedant age (r 550-1650), under the direction of meritorious anti¬ 
quaries, Camden, Savile, Duchesne, Gale, and others. Still official 
documents and state papers were wanting, and had they been at 
hand would hardly have been used with competence. The national 
and religious limitations were still too marked and hostile to per¬ 
mit a free survey over the historic field. The eighteenth century, 
though it opened with a bloody war, was essentially peaceful in 
spirit: governments made war, but men and nations longed for 
rest. The increased interest in the past was shown by the publi¬ 
cation nearly contemporary of the great historic collections of Ry- 
mer (a.d. 1704), Leibnitz (1707), and Muratori (1723). Before 
the middle of the century the historic muse had abundant oil to 
feed her lamp. Still the lamp would probably not have been 

* M^zeray’s great history of France is next to valueless till he reaches the sixteenth 
century, that was a period bordering on his own. Thuanus deals with contemporary 
events. 




6 2 


GIBBON ,; 


lighted but for the singular pass to which French thought had 
come. 

From the latter years of Louis XIV. till the third quarter of 
the eighteenth century was all but closed, France had a govern¬ 
ment at once so weak and wicked, so much below the culture of 
the people it oppressed, that the better minds of the nation turned 
away in disgust from their domestic ignominy, and sought conso¬ 
lation in contemplating foreign virtue wherever they thought it was 
to be found ; in short, they became cosmopolitan. The country 
which has since been the birthplace of Chauvinism, put away 
national pride almost with passion. But this was not all. The 
country whose king was called the Eldest Son of the Church, and 
with which untold pains had been taken to keep it orthodox, had 
lapsed into such an abhorrence of the Church and of orthodoxy 
that anything seemed preferable to them in its eyes. 

Thus, as if by enchantment, the old barriers disappeared, both 
national and religious. Man and his fortunes, in all climes and all 
ages, became topics of intense interest, especially when they tended 
to degrade by contrast the detested condition of things at home. 
This was the weak side of historical speculation in France : it was 
essentially polemical; prompted less by genuine interest in the 
past than by strong hatred of the present. Of this perturbation 
note must be taken. But it is none the less true that the disen¬ 
gagement of French thought from the narrow limits of nation and 
creed produced, as it were in a moment, a lofty conception of his¬ 
tory such as subsequent ages may equal, but can hardly surpass. 

The influence of French thought was European, and nowhere- 
more beneficial than in England. In other countries it was too 
despotic, and produced in Germany, at least, Lessing’s memorable 
reaction. But the robust national and political life of England 
reduced it to a welcome flavouring of our insular temperament. The 
Scotch, who had a traditional connection with France, were the 
first importers of the new views. Hume, who had practically grown 
in the same soil as Voltaire, was only three years behind him in the 
historic field. Th z Age of Louis XIV. was published in 1751, and 
the first volume of the History of England in 1754. Hume was no 
disciple of Voltaire ; he simply wrote under the stimulus of the 
same order of ideas. Robertson, who shortly followed him, no 
doubt drew direct inspiration from Voltaire, and his weightiest 
achievement, the View of the State of Europe, prefixed to his His¬ 
tory of Charles V, was largely influenced, if it was not absolutely 
suggested, by the Essay on Manners. But both Hume and 
Robertson surpassed their masters, if we allow, as seems right, 
that the French were their masters. The Scotch writers had no 
quarrel with their country or their age as the French had. One 
was a Tory, the other a Whig ; and Hume allowed himself to be 
unworthily affected by party bias in his historical judgment. But 
neither was tempted to turn history into a covert attack on the 
condition of things amid which they lived. Hence a calmness and 
dignity of tone and language, very different from the petulant 


Gin BON. 


63 

brilliancy of Voltaire, who is never so happy as when he can make 
the past look mean and ridiculous, merely because it was the parent 
of the odious present. But, excellent as were the Scotch historians 
—Hume, in style nearly perfect ; Robertson, admirable for gravity 
and shrewd sense—they yet left much to be desired. Hume had 
despatched his five quartos, containing the whole history of England 
from the Roman period to the Revolution, in nine years. Cons kb 
ering that the subject was new to him when he began, such 
rapidity made genuine research out of the question. Robertson 
had the oddest way of consulting his friends as to what subject it 
would be advisable for him to treat, and was open to proposals from 
any quarter with exemplary impartiality ; this only showed how 
little the stern conditions of real historic inquiry were appreciated 
by him. In fact it is not doing them injustice to say that these 
eminent men were a sort of modern Livies, chiefly occupied with 
the rhetorical part of their work, and not over inclined to waste 
their time in ungrateful digging in the deep mines of historic lore. 
Obviously the place was open for a writer who should unite all the 
broad spirit of comprehensive survey, with the thorough and minute 
patience of a Benedictine ; whose subject, mellowed by long brood¬ 
ing, should have sought him rather than he it; whose whole pre¬ 
vious course of study had been an unconscious preparation for one 
great effort which was to fill his life. When Gibbon sat down to 
write his book, the man had been found who united these difficult 
conditions. 

The decline and fall of Rome is the greatest event in history. 
It occupied a larger portion of the earth’s surface, it affected the 
lives and fortunes of a larger number of human beings, than any 
other revolution on record. For it was essentially one, though it 
took centuries to consummate, and though it had for its theatre the 
civilised world. Great evolutions and catastrophes happened be¬ 
fore it, and have happened since, but nothing which can compare 
with it in volume and more physical size. Nor was it less morally. 
The destruction of Rome was not only a destruction of an empire, 
it was the destruction of a phase of human thought, of a system of 
human beliefs, of morals, politics, civilisation, as all these had ex¬ 
isted in the world for ages. The drama is so vast, the cataclysm 
so appalling, that even at this day we are hardly removed from it 
far enough to take it fully in. The mind is oppressed, the imagina¬ 
tion flags under the load imposed upon it. The capture and sack 
of a town one can fairly conceive : the massacre, outrage, the 
flaming roofs, the desolation. Even the devastation of a province 
can be approximately reproduced in thought. But what thought 
can embrace the devastation and destruction of all the civilised 
portions of Europe, Africa, and Asia? Who can realise a Thirty 
Years War lasting five hundred years ? a devastation of the Pala¬ 
tinate extending through fifteen generations ? If we try to insert 
into the picture, as we undoubtedly should do, the founding of the 
new, which was going on beside this destruction of the old, the 
settling down of the barbarian hosts in the conquered provinces, the 



6 4 


GIBBON . 


expansion of the victorious Church, driving paganism from the 
towns to the country and at last extinguishing it entirely, the effort 
becomes more difficult than ever. The legend of the Seven Sleep¬ 
ers testifies to the need men felt, even before the tragedy had 
come to an end, to symbolize in a manageable form the tremendous 
changes they saw going on around them. But the legend only 
refers to the changes in religion. The fall of Rome was much more 
than that. It was the death of the old pagan world and the birth 
of the new Christian world—the greatest transition in history. 

This, and no less than this, is Gibbon’s subject. 

He has treated it in such a way as even now fills competent judges 
with something like astonishment. His accuracy, coupled with the 
extraordinary range of his matter, the variety of his topics, the 
complexity of his undertaking, the fulness and thoroughness of 
his knowledge, never failing at any point over the vast field, the 
ease and mastery with which he lifts the enormous load, are ap¬ 
preciated in proportion to the information and abilities of his critic. 
One testimonial will suffice. Mr. Freeman says : “ That Gibbon 
should ever be displaced seems impossible. That wonderful man 
monopolised, so to speak, the historical genius and the historical 
learning of a whole generation, and left little, indeed, of either 
for his contemporaries. He remains the one historian of the eight* 
eenth century whom modern research has neither set aside nor 
threatened to set aside. We may correct and improve from the 
stores which have been opened since Gibbon’s time ; we may write 
again large parts of his story from other and often truer and more 
wholesome points of view, but the work of Gibbon as a whole, as 
the encyclopaedic history of 1300 years, as the grandest of historical 
designs, carried out alike with wonderful power and with wonder¬ 
ful accuracy, must ever keep its place. Whatever else is read, 
Gibbon must be read too.” 

Gibbon’s immense scheme did not unfold itself to him at once : 
he passed through at least two distinct stages in the conception of 
his work. The original idea had been confined to the decline and 
fall of the city of Rome. Before he began to write, this had been 
expanded to the fall of the empire of the West. The first volume, 
which we saw him publish in the last chapter, was only an instal¬ 
ment, limited to the accession of Constantine, through a doubt as 
to how his labours would be received. The two following volumes, 
published in 1781, completed his primitive plan. Then he paused 
exactly a year before he resolved to carry on his work to its true 
end, the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. The latter 
portion he achieved in three volumes more, which he gave to the 
world on his fifty-first birthday, in 1788. Thus the work naturally 
falls into two equal parts. It will be more convenient to disregard 
in our remarks the interval of five years which separated the publi¬ 
cation of the first volume from its two immediate companions. The 
first three volumes constitute a whole in themselves, which we will 
now consider. 

From the accession of Commodus, a.d. 180, to the last of the 


GIBBON. 


65 

Western Caesars, a.d. 476, three centuries elapsed. The first date 
is a real point of departure, the commencement of a new stage of 
decay in the empire. The second is a mere official record of the 
final disappearance of a series of phantom sovereigns, whose vanish¬ 
ing was hardly noticed. Between these limits the empire passed 
from the autumnal calm of the Antonine period, through the dread¬ 
ful century of anarchy between Pertinax and Diocletian, through 
the relative peace brought about by Diocletian’s reforms, the civil 
wars of the sons of Constantine, the disastrous defeat of Julian, the 
calamities of the Gothic war, the short respite under Theodosius, 
the growing anarchy and misery under his incompetent sons, the 
three sieges of Rome and its sack by the Goths, the awful appear¬ 
ance of Attila and his Huns, the final submergence of the Western 
Empire under the barbarians, and the universal ruin which marked 
the close of the fifth century. This was the temporal side of affairs. 
On the spiritual, we have the silent occult growth of the early Church, 
the conversion of Constantine, the tremendous conflict of hostile 
sects, the heresy of Arius, the final triumph of Athanasius, the 
spread of monasticism, the extinction of paganism. Antiquity has 
ended, the middle ages have begun. 

Over all this immense field Gibbon moves with a striking attitude 
of power, which arose from his consciousness of complete prepa¬ 
ration. What there was to be known of his subject he felt sure 
that he knew. His method of treatment is very simple, one might 
say primitive, but it is very effective. He masters his materials, 
and then condenses and clarifies them into a broad, well-filled nar¬ 
rative, which is always or nearly always perfectly lucid through his 
skill in grouping events and characters, and his fine boldness in 
neglecting chronological sequence for the sake of clearness and 
unity of action. It is doing the book injustice to consult it only as 
a work of reference, or even to read it in detached portions. It 
should be read through, if we would appreciate the art with which 
the story is told. No part can be fairly judged without regard to 
the remainder. In fact, Gibbon was much more an aitist than per¬ 
haps be suspected, and less of a philosophic thinker on history than 
he would have been willing to allow, His short-comings in this 
latter respect will be adverted to presently; we are now consider¬ 
ing his merits. And among these the very high one of lofty and vigor¬ 
ous narrative stands pre-eminent. The campaigns of Julian, Beli- 
sarius, and Heraclius are painted with a dash and clearness which 
few civil historians have equalled. His descriptive power is also 
very ^reat. The picture of Constantinople in the seventeenth 
chapter is, as the writer of these pages can testify, a wonderful 
achievement, both for fidelity and brilliancy, coming from a man 
who had never seen the place. 


“ If we survey Byzantium in the extent which it acquired with the 
august name of Constantinople, the figure of the imperial city may be 
represented under that of an unequal triangle. The obtuse point, which 
advances towards the east and the shores of Asia, meets and repels the 

5 




66 


GIBBON. 


waves of the Thracian Bosphorus. The northern side of the city is 
bounded by the harbour; and the southern is washed by the Propontis, or 
Sea of Marmora. The basis of the triangle is opposed to the west, and 
terminates the continent of Europe. But the admirable form and division 
of the circumjacent land and water cannot, without a more ample expla¬ 
nation, be clearly or sufficiently understood. 

The winding channel through which the waters of the Euxine flow 
with rapid and incessant course towards the Mediterranean received the 
appellation of Bosphorus, a name not less celebrated in the history than 
in the fables of antiquity. A crowd of temples and of votive altars, pro¬ 
fusely scattered along its steep and woody banks, attested the unskilfulness, 
the terrors, and the devotion of the Grecian navigators, who, after the ex¬ 
ample of the Argonauts, explored the dangers of the inhospitable Euxine. 
On these banks tradition long preserved the memory of the palace of 
Phineus, infested by the obscene Harpies, and of the sylvan reign of 
Amycus, who defied the son of Leda to the combat of the cestus. The 
straits of the Bosphorus are terminated by the Cyanean rocks, which, 
according to the description of the poets, had once floated on the surface 
of the waters, and were destined by the gods to protect the entrance of 
the Euxine against the eye of profane curiosity. From the Cyanean rocks 
to the ruin and harbour of Byzantium the winding length of the Bosphorus 
extends about sixteen miles, and its most ordinary breadth may be computed 
at about one mile and a half. The new castles of Europe and Asia are 
constructed on either continent upon the foundations of two celebrated 
temples of Serapis and Jupiter Urius. The old castles, a work of the 
Greek emperors, command the narrowest part of the channel, in a place 
where the opposite banks advance within five hundred yards o.f each other. 
These fortresses were destroyed and strengthened by Mahomet the Second 
when he meditated the siege of Constantinople ; but the Turkish conqueror 
was most probably ignorant that near two thousand years before his reign 
Darius had chosen the same situation to connect the two continents by a 
bridge of boats. At a small distance from the old castles we discover the 
little town of Chrysopolis or Scutari, which may almost be considered as 
the Asiatic suburb of Constantinople. The Bosphorus, as it begins to 
open into the Pr.opontis, passes between Byzantium and Chalcedon. The 
latter of these two cities was built by the Greeks a few years before the 
former, and the blindness of its founders, who overlooked the superior 
advantages of the opposite coast, has been stigmatised by a proverbial 
expression of contempt. 

“ The harbour of Constantinople, which may be considered as an arm 
of the Bosphorus, obtained in a very remote period, the denomination of 
the Golden Horn . The curve which it describes might be compared to 
the horn of a stag, or as it should seem with more propriety, to that of an 
ox. The epithet oigolden was expressive of the riches every wind wafted 
from the most distant countries into the secure and capacious port of 
Constantinople. The river Lvcus, formed by the conflux of two little 
streams, pours into the harbour a perpetual supply of fresh water, which 
serves to cleanse the bottom and to invite the periodical shoals of fish to 
seek their retreat in that convenient recess. As the vicissitudes of the 
tides are scarcely felt in those seas, the constant depth of the harbour allows 
goods to be landed on the quays without the assistance of boats, and it 
has been observed that in many places the largest vessels may rest their 
prows against the houses while their sterns are floating in the water. 
From the mouth of the Lvcus to that of the harbour, this arm of the Bos¬ 
phorus is more than seven miles in length. The entrance is about five 


GIBBON. 


67 

hundred yards broad, and a strong chain could be occasionally drawn 
across it, to guard the port and the city from the attack of an hostile navy. 

“ Between the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, the shores of Europe 
and Asia receding on either side include the Sea of Marmora, which was 
known to the ancients bv the denomination of the Propontis. The nav¬ 
igation from the issue of the Bosphorus to the entrance of the Hellespont 
is about one hundred and twenty miles. Those who steer their westward 
course through the middle of the Propontis may at once descry the high¬ 
lands of Thrace and Bithynia and never lose sight of the lofty summit of 
Mount Olympus, covered with eternal snows. They leave on the left a 
deep gulf, at the bottom of which Nicomedia was seated, the imperial 
residence of Diocletian, and they pass the small islands of Cyzicus and 
Proconnesus before they cast anchor at Gallipoli, where the sea which 
separates Asia from Europe is again contracted to a narrow channel. 

“The geographers, who with the most skilful accuracy have surveyed 
the form and extent of the Hellespont, assign about sixty miles for the 
winding course and about three miles for the ordinary breadth of those 
celebrated straits. But the narrowest part of the channel is found to the 
northward of the old Turkish castles between the cities of Sestos and 
Abydos. It was here that the adventurous Leander braved the passage 
of the flood for the possession of his mistress. It was here, likewise, in 
a place where the distance between the opposite banks cannot exceed five 
hundred paces, that Xerxes imposed a stupendous bridge of boats for the 
purpose of transporting into Europe an hundred and seventy myriads of 
barbarians. A sea contracted within such narrow limits may seem but ill 
to deserve the singular epithet of broad , which Homer, as well as Orpheus, 
has frequently bestowed on the Hellespont. But our ideas of greatness 
are of a relative nature; the traveller, and especially the poet, who sailed 
along the Hellespont, who pursued the windings of the stream and con¬ 
templated the rural scenery which appeared on every side to terminate the 
prospect, insensibly lost the remembrance of the sea, and his fancy painted 
those celebrated straits with all the attributes of a mighty river flowing 
with a swift current in the midst of a‘ woody and inland country, and at 
length through a wide mouth discharging itself into the .Egean or Archi¬ 
pelago. Ancient Troy, seated on an eminence at the foot of Mount Ida, 
overlooked the mouth of the Hellespont, which scarcely received an acces¬ 
sion of waters from the tribute of those immortal rivulets the Simois and 
Scamander. The Grecian camp had stretched twelve miles along the 
shore from the Sigaean to the Rhaetian promontory, and the flanks of the 
army were guarded by the bravest chiefs who fought under the banners of 
Agamemnon. The first of these promontories was occupied by Achilles 
with his invincible Myrmidons, and the dauntless Ajax pitched his tents 
on the other. After Ajax had fallen a sacrifice to hts disappointed pride 
and to the ingratitude of the Greeks, his sepulchre was erected on the 
ground where he had defended the navy against the rage of Jove and 
Hector, and the citizens of the rising town, of Rhaetium celebrated his 
memory with divine honours. Before Constantine gave a just preference 
to the situation of Byzantium he had conceived the design of erecting the 
seat of empire on this celebrated spot, from whence the Romans derived 
their fabulous origin. The extensive plain which lies below ancient Troy 
towards the Rhaetian promontory was first chosen for his new capital; 
and though the undertaking was soon relinquished, the stately remains of 
unfinished walls and towers attracted the notice of all who sailed through 
the straits of the Hellespont. 

“ We are at present qualified to view the advantageous position of 





68 


GIBBON. 


Constantinople; which appears to have been formed by nature for the i 
centre and capital of a great monarchy. Situated in the forty-first degree 
of latitude, the imperial city commanded from her seven hills the opposite 
shores of Europe and Asia*; the climate was healthy and temperate; the 
soil fertile; the harbour secure and capacious ; and the approach on the 
Bide of the continent was of small extent and easy defence. The Bospho¬ 
rus and the Hellespont may be considered as the two gates of Constanti¬ 
nople, and the prince who possesses those important passages could 
always shut them against a naval enemy and open them to the fleets of j 
commerce. The preservation of the eastern provinces may in some degree 1 
be ascribed to the policy of Constantine, as the barbarians of the Euxine, 
who in the preceding age had poured their armaments into the heart of 
the Mediterranean, soon desisted from the exercise of piracy, and de¬ 
spaired of forcing this insurmountable barrier. When the gates of the j ! 
Hellespont and Bosphorus were shut, the capital still enjoyed within their 
spacious inclosure every production which could supply the wants or 
gratify the luxury of its numerous inhabitants. The sea-coasts of Thrace 
and Bithynia, which languish under the weight of Turkish oppression, still i 
exhibit a rich prospect of vineyards, of gardens, and of plentiful harvests ; 
and the Propontis has ever been renowned for an inexhaustible store of j 
the most exquisite fish that are taken in their stated seasons without skill 
and almost without labour. But wffien the passages of the straits were ! 
thrown open for trade, they alternately admitted the natural and artificial j 
riches of the north and south, of the Euxine and the Mediterranean. * 
Whatever rude commodities were collected in the forests of Germany and i 
Scythia, and as far as the sources of the Tanais and Borysthenes ; what- j 
soever was manufactured by the skill of Europe or Asia, the corn of Egypt, 
the gems and spices of the furthest India, were brought by the varying | 
winds into the port of Constantinople, w hich for many ages "attracted* the 
commerce of the ancient world. 

“ The prospect of beauty, of safety, and of wealth united in a single 
spot w r as sufficient to justify the choice of Constantine. But as seme mix- : 
ture of prodigy and fable has in every age been supposed to reflect a 
becoming majesty on the origin of great cities, the emperor was desirous 
of ascribing his resolution not so much to the uncertain counsels of human 
policy as to the eternal and infallible decrees of divine wisdom. In one of j 
his law’s he has been careful to instruct posterity that in obedience to the 
commands of God he laid the everlasting foundations of Constantinople, j 
and though he has not condescended to relate in what manner the celestial ' 
inspiration was communicated to his mind, the defect of his modest silence j 
has been liberally supplied by the ingenuity of succeeding writers, who 
describe the nocturnal vision which appeared to the fancy of Constantine j 
as he slept within the walls of Byzantium. The tutelar genius of the city, I 
a venerable matron sinking under the w'eight of years and infirmities, was | 
suddenly transformed into a blooming maid, whom his own hands adorned j 
with all the symbols of imperial greatness. The monarch awoke, inter¬ 
preted the auspicious omen, and obeyed without hesitation the will of j 
Heaven. "1 he day which gave birth to a city or a colony was celebrated i 
by the Romans w r ith such ceremonies as had been ordained by a generous 
superstition; and though Constantine might omit some rites which savoured I 
too strongly of their pagan origin, yet he was anxious to leave a deep 
impression of hope and respect on the minds of the spectators. On foot, 
w'lth a lance in his hand, the emperor himself led the solemn procession : 
and directed the line which was traced as the boundarv of the destined 
capital: till the growing circumference was observed with astonishment 




GIBBON . 


69 

by the assistants, who at length ventured to observe that he had already 
exceeded the most ample measure of a great citv. * I shall still advance,’ 
replied Constantine, * till HE the invisible Guide who marches before me, 
thinks proper to stop.’” 

Gibbon proceeds to describe the extent, limits, and edifices of 
Constantinople. Unfortunately the limits of our space prevent us 
from giving more than a portion of his brilliant picture. 

“ In the actual state of the city the palace and gardens of the Seraglio 
occupy the eastern promontory, the first of the seven hills, and cover 
about one hundred and fifty acres of our own measure. The seat of 
Turkish jealousy and despotism is erected on the foundations of a Grecian 
republic : but it may be supposed that the Byzantines were tempted by the 
convenience of the harbour to extend their habitations on that side beyond 
the modern limits of the Seraglio. The new walls of Constantine stretched 
from the port to the Propontis across the enlarged breadth of the triangle, 
at the distance of fifteen stadia from the ancient fortifications: and with 
the city of Byzantium they inclosed five of the seven hills, which to the 
eyes of those who approach Constantinople appear to rise above each 
other in beautiful order. About a century after the death of the founder 
the new buildings, extending on one side up the harbour, and on the other 
the Propontis, already covered the narrow ridge of the sixth and the broad 
summit of the seventh hill. The necessity of protecting those suburbs 
from the incessant inroads of the barbarians engaged the younger Theo¬ 
dosius to surround his capital with an adequate and permanent inclosure 
of walls. From the eastern promontory to the Golden Gate, the extreme 
length of Constantinople was above three Roman miles ; the circumference 
, measured between ten and eleven ; and the surface might be computed as 
equal to about two thousand English acres. It is impossible to justify the 
j vain and credulous exaggerations of modern travellers, who have some- 
, times stretched the limits of Constantinople over the adjacent villages of 
the European and even Asiatic coasts. But the suburbs of Pera and 
| Galata, though situate beyond the harbour, may deserve to be considered 

I as a part of the city, and this addition may perhaps authorise the measure 
of a Byzantine historian, who assigns sixteen Greek (about sixteen Roman) 
miles for the circumference of his native city. Such an extent may seem 
not unworthy of an imperial residence. Yet Constantinople must yield to 
Babylon and Thebes, to ancient Rome, to London, and even to Paris . . 

“ Some estimate may be formed of the expense bestowed with im¬ 
perial liberality on Constantinople, by the allowance of about two millions 
five hundred thousand pounds for the construction of the walls, the por¬ 
ticoes, and the aqueducts. The forests that overshadowed the shores of 
the Euxine, and the celebrated quarries of white marble in the little island 
of Proconnesus, supplied an inexhaustible stock of materials ready to be 
conveyed by the convenience of a short water carriage to the harbour of 
Byzantium. A multitude of labourers and artificers urged the conclusion 
of the work with incessant toil, but the impatience of Constantine soon 
discovered that in the decline of the arts the skill as well as the number 
of his architects bore a very unequal proportion to the greatness of his 
design. . . The buildings of the new city were executed by such arti¬ 
ficers as the age of Constantine could afford, but they were decorated by 
the hands of the most celebrated masters of the age of Pericles and Alex¬ 
ander. ... By Constantine’s command the cities of Greece and Asia were 
despoiled of their most valuable ornaments. The trophies of memorable 





7 o 


GIBBON. 


wars, the objects of religious veneration, the most finished statues of the 
gods and heroes, of the sages and poets of ancient times, contributed to 
the splendid triumph of Constantinople. 

. . . The Circus, or Hippodrome, was a stately building of about 
four hundred paces in length and one hundred in breadth. The space 
between the two metce , or goals, was filled with statues and obelisks, and 
we may still remark a very singular fragment of antiquity—the bodies of 
three serpents twisted into one pillar of brass. Their triple heads had 
once supported the golden tripod which, after the defeat of Xerxes, was 
consecrated in the temple of Delphi by the victorious Greeks. The beauty 
of the Hippodrome has been long since defaced by the rude hands of the 
Turkish conquerors; but, under the similar appellation of Atmeidan, it 
still serves as a place of exercise for their horses. From the throne whence 
the emperor viewed the Circensian games a winding staircase descended 
to the palace, a magnificent edifice, which scarcely yielded to the residence 
of Rome itself, and which, together with the dependent courts, gardens, 
and porticoes, covered a considerable extent of ground upon the banks of 
the Propontis between the Hippodrome and the church of St. Sophia. 
We might likewise celebrate the baths, which still retained the name of 
Zeuxippus, after they had been enriched by the magnificence of Constan¬ 
tine with lo’fty columns, various marbles, and above three score statues of 
bronze. But we should deviate from the design of this history if we at¬ 
tempted minutely to describe the different buildings or quarters of the 
city. ... A particular description, composed about a century after its 
foundation, enumerates a capitol or school of learning, a circus, two the¬ 
atres, eight public and one hundred and fifty-three private baths, fifty-two 
porticoes, five granaries, eight aqueducts or reservoirs of water, four spa¬ 
cious halls for the meeting of the senate or courts of justice, fourteen 
churches, fourteen palaces, and four thousand three hundred and eighty- 
eight houses, which for their size or beauty deserved to be distinguished 
from the multitude of plebeian habitations.” 

Gibbon’s conception of history was that of a spacious pano¬ 
rama, in which a series of tableaux pass in succession before the 
reader’s eye. He adverts but little, far too little, to that side of 
events which does not strike the visual sense. He rarely general¬ 
ises or sums up a widely-scattered mass of facts into - pregnant 
synthetic views. But possibly he owes some of the permanence 
of his fame to this very defect. As soon as ever a writer begins 
to support a thesis, to prove a point, he runs imminent danger of 
one-sidedness and partiality in his presentation of events. & Gib¬ 
bon’s faithful transcript of the past has neither the merit nor the 
drawback of generalisation, and he has come in consequence to be 
regarded as a common mine of authentic facts to which all specu¬ 
lators can resort. 

The first volume, which was received with such warm accla¬ 
mation, is inferior to those that followed. He seems to have been 
partly aware of this himself, and speaks of the “ concise arid super¬ 
ficial narrative from Commodus to Alexander.” But the whole 
volume lacks the grasp and easy mastery which distinguish its 
successors. No doubt the subject-matter was comparatively mea¬ 
gre and ungrateful. The century between Commodus and Diocle¬ 
tian was one long spasm of anarchy and violence, which was, as 







GIBBON. 


7 1 


Niebuhr said, incapable of historical treatment. The obscure con¬ 
fusion of the age is aggravated into almost complete darkness by 
the wretched materials which alone have survived, and the attempt 
to found a dignified narrative on such scanty and imperfect author¬ 
ities was hardly wise. Gibbon would have shown a greater sense 
of historic proportion if he had passed over this period with a few 
bold strokes, and summed up with brevity such general results as 
may be fairly deduced. We may say of the first volume that it 
was tentative in every way. In it the author not only sounded his 
public, but he was also trying his instrument, running over the 
keys in preparatory search tor the right note. He strikes it full 
and clear in the two final chapters on the Early Church; these, 
whatever objections may be made against them on other grounds, 
are the real commencement of the Decline and Fall. 

From this point onwards he marches with the steady and meas¬ 
ured tramp of a .Roman legion. His materials improve both in 
number and quality. The fourth century, though a period of fright¬ 
ful anarchy and disaster if compared to a settled epoch, is a period of 
relative peace and order when compared to the third century. The 
fifth was calamitous beyond example; but ecclesiastical history 
comes to the support of secular history in a way which might have 
excited more gratitude in Gibbon than it did. From Constantine 
to Augustulus Gibbon is able te put forth all his strength. His 
style is less superfine, as his matter becomes more copious; and 
the more definite cleavage of events brought about by the separa¬ 
tion between the Eastern and Western Empires, enables him to 
display the higher qualities which marked him as an historian. 

The merit of his work, it is again necessary to point out, will 
not be justly estimated unless the considerations suggested at the 
beginning of this chapter be kept in view. We have to remember 
that his culture was chiefly French, and that his opinions were 
those which prevailed in France in the latter half of the eighteenth 
century. He was the friend of Voltaire, Helvetius, and D’Holbach ; 
that is, of men who regarded the past as one long nightmare of 
crime, imposture and folly, instigated by the selfish machinations 
of kings and priests. A strong infusion of the spirit which ani¬ 
mated not only Voltaire’s Essay on Manners, but certain parts of 
Hume’s History of England might have been expected as a matter 
of course. It' is essentially absent. Gibbon’s private opinions 
may have been what they, will, but he has approved his high title 
to the character of an historian by keeping them well in abeyance. 
When he turned his eyes to the past and viewed it with intense 
gaze, he was absorbed in the spectacle, his peculiar prejudices were 
hushed, he thought only of the object before him and of reprodu¬ 
cing it as well as he could. This is not the common opinion, but, 
nevertheless, a great deal can be said to support it. 

It will be as well to take two concrete tests—his treatment of 
two topics which of all others were most likely to betray him into 
deviations from historic candour. If he stands these, he may be 



GIBBON .; 


72 

admitted to stand any less severe. Let them be his account of 
Julian, and his method of dealing with Christianity. 

The snare that was spread by Julian’s apostasy for the philosl 1 
ophers of the last century, and their haste to'fall into it, are wel- 
known The spectacle of a philosopher on the throne who pro 
claimed toleration, and contempt for Christianity, was too tempting 
and too useful controversially to allow of much circumspection in 
handling it. The odious comparisons it offered were so.exactly 
what was wanted for depreciating the Most Christian king and 
his courtly Church, that all further inquiry into, the apostate's 
merits seemed useless. Voltaire finds that Julian had all the 
qualities of Trajan without his defects ; all the virtues of Cato j 
without his ill humour ; all that one admires in Julius Caesar without j 
his vices ; he had the continency of Scipio, and was in all ways j 
equal to Marcus Aurelius, the first of men. Nay, more. If he had 
only lived longer, he would have retarded the fall of the Roman 
Empire, if he could not arrest it entirely. We here see the length 
to which “ polemical fury ” could hurry a man of rare insight. 
Julian had been a subject of contention for years between the 
hostile factions. While one party made it a point of honour to 
prove that he was a monster, warring consciously against the Most 
High, the other was equally determined to prove that he was a i 
paragon of all virtue, by reason of his enmity to the Christian re¬ 
ligion. The deep interest attaching to the pagan reaction in the 
fourth century, and the social and moral problems it suggests, were 
perceived by neither side, and it is not difficult to see why they 
were not. The very word reaction, in its modern sense, will hardly 
be found in the eighteenth century, and the thing that it expresses ; 
was very imperfectly conceived. We, who have been surrounded 
by reactions, real or supposed, in politics, in religion, in philosophy, 
recognise an old acquaintance in the efforts of the limited, intense 
Julian to stem the tide of progress as represented in the Christian 
Church. It is a fine instance of the way in which the ever-unfold¬ 
ing present is constantly lighting up the p^ist. Julian and his party 
were the Ultramontane's of their day in matters of religion, and the 
Romantics in matters of literature. Those radical innovators and 
reformers, the Christians, were marching from conquest to con¬ 
quest, over the old faith, making no concealment of their revolu¬ 
tionary aims and intentions to wipe out the past as speedily as 
possible. The conservatives of those times, after long despising 
the reformers, passed easily to fearing them and hating them as 
their success became threatening. “The attachment to paganism,” 
says Neander, “lingered especially in many of the ancient and 
noble families of Greece and Rome.” Old families, or new rich 
ones who wished to be thought old, would be sure to take up the 
cause of ancestral wisdom as against modern innovation. Before 
Julian came to the throne, a pagan reaction was imminent, as 
Neander points out. Julian himself was a remarkable man, as men 
of his class usually are. In the breaking up of old modes of belief, 
as Mill has said, “the most strong-minded and discerning, next to 





GIBBON. 


73 


those who head the movement, are generally those who bring up 
the rear.” The energy of his mind and character was quite ex¬ 
ceptional, and if we reflect that he only reigned sixteen months, 
and died in his thirty-second year, we must admit that.the mark he 
has left in history is very surprising. He and his policy are now 
discussed with entire calm by inquirers of all schools, and sincere 
Christians like Neander and Dean Milrnan are as little disposed to 
attack him with acrimony, as those of a different way of thought 
are inclined to make him a subject of unlimited panegyric. 

Through this difficult subject Gibbon has found his way with a 
prudence and true insight which extorted admiration, even in his 
own day. His account of Julian is essentially a modern account. 
The influence of his private opinions can hardly be traced in the 
brilliant chapters that he has devoted to the Apostate. He sees 
through Julian’s weaknesses in a way in which Voltaire never saw 
or cared to see. His pitiful superstition, his huge vanity, his weak 
affectation are brought out with an incisive clearness and subtle 
penetration into character which Gibbon was not always so ready 
to display. At the same time he does full justice to Julian’s real 
merits. And this is perhaps the most striking evidence of his 
penetration. An error on the side of injustice to Julian is very 
natural in a man who, having renounced allegiance to Christianity, 
yet fully realises the futility of attempting to arrest it in the fourth 
century. A certain intellectual disdain for the reactionary emperor 
is difficult to avoid. Gibbon surmounts it completely, and he does 
so. not in consequence of a general conception of the reactionary 
spirit, as a constantly emerging element in society, but by sheer 
historical insight, clear vision of the fact before him. It may be 
added that nowhere is Gibbon’s command of vivid narrative seen 
to greater advantage than in the chapters that he has devoted to 
Julian. The daring march from Gaul to Illyricum is told with im¬ 
mense spirit; but the account of Julian’s final campaign and death 
in Persia is still better, and can hardly be surpassed. It has every 
merit of clearness and rapidity, yet is full of dignity, which culmi¬ 
nates in this fine passage referring to the night before the emperor 
received his mortal wound. 

“ While Julian struggled with the almost insuperable difficulties 
of his situation, the silent hours of the night were still devoted to 
study and contemplation. Whenever he closed his eyes in short 
and interrupted slumbers, his mind was agitated by painful anx¬ 
iety ; nor can it be thought surprising that the Genius of the em¬ 
pire should once more appear before him, covering with a funereal 
veil his head and his horn of abundance, and slowly retiring from 
the Imperial tent. The monarch started from his couch, and, step¬ 
ping forth to refresh his wearied spirits with the coolness of the 
midnight air, he beheld a fiery meteor, which shot athwart the sJcy 
and suddenly vanished. Julian was convinced that he had seen 
the menacing countenance of the god of war: the council which 
he summoned, of Tuscan Haruspices, unanimously pronounced 
that he should abstain from action ; but on this occasion necessity 



G/BBON. 


74 

and reason were more prevalent than superstition, and the trum* 
pets sounded at the break of day.” * 

It will not be so easy to absolve Gibbon from the charge of 
prejudice in reference to his treatment of the Early Church. . It 
cannot be denied that in the two famous chapters, at least, which 
concluded his first volume, he adopted a tone which must be pro¬ 
nounced offensive, not only from the Christian point of view, but 
on the broad ground of historical equity. His preconceived opin¬ 
ions were too strong for him on this occasion, and obstructed his 
generally clear vision. Yet a distinction must be made. The of¬ 
fensive tone in question is confined to these two chapters. We 
need not think that it was in consequence of the clamour they 
raised that he adopted a different style with reference to church 
matters in his subsequent volumes. A more creditable explana¬ 
tion of his different tone, which will be presently suggested, is at 
least as probable. In any case, these two chapters remain the 
chief slur on his historical impartiality, and it is worth while to 
examine what his offence amounts to. 

Gibbon’s account of the early Christians is vitiated by his nar¬ 
row and distorted conception of the emotional side of man’s na¬ 
ture. Having no spiritual aspirations himself, he could not ap¬ 
preciate or understand them in others. Those emotions which 
have for their object the unseen world and its centre, God, had no 
meaning for him ; and he was tempted to explain them away when 
he came across them, or to ascribe their origin and effects to 
other instincts which were more intelligible to him. The wonder¬ 
land which the mystic inhabits was closed to him, he remained out¬ 
side of it and reproduced in sarcastic travesty the reports he heard 
of its marvels. What he has called the secondary causes of the 
growth of Christianity, were much rather its effects. The first is 
“the inflexible and intolerant zeal of the Christians ” and their ab¬ 
horrence of idolatry. With great power of language, he paints 
the early Christian “ encompassed with infernal snares in every 
convivial entertainment, as often as his friends, invoking the hos¬ 
pitable deities, poured out libations to each other’s happiness. 
When the bride, struggling with well affected reluctance, was 
forced in hymenaeal pomp over the threshold of her new habita¬ 
tion, or when the sad procession of the dead slowly moved to¬ 
wards the funeral pile, the Christian on these interesting occasions 
was compelled to desert the persons who were dearest to him, 
rather than contract the guilt inherent in those impious ceremo- 

* It is interesting to compare Gibbon’s admirable picture with the harsh original Latin 
of his authority, Ammianus Marcellinus. “Ipse autem ad sollicitam suspensamque 
quietem paullisper protractus, cum somno (ut solebat) depulso, ad jemulationem Caesaris 
Julii quaedam sub pellibus scribens, obscuro noctis altitudine sensus cujusdam i hiiosophi 
teneretur, vidit squalidius, ut confessus est proximis, speciem illam Genii publici, quam 
quum ad Augustum surgeret culmen, conspexit in Galliis, velata cum capite cornucopia 
per aulaea tristius discedentem. Et quamquam ad momentum haesit, stupore defixus, 
omni tamen superior metu, ventura decretis caelestibus commendabat ; relicto humi strato 
cubili, adulta jam excitus nocte, et numinibus per sacra depuisoria supplicans, flagrantis- 
simam facem cadenti similem visam, aeris parte sulcata evanuisse existimavit : horroreque 
perfusus est, ne ita aperte minax Martis adparuerit siclus .”—A mm. Marc . lib. xxv. 
cap. 2. 



GIBB ON . 


75 

nies.” It is strange that Gibbon did not ask himself what was the 
cause of this inflexible zeal. The zeal produced the effects alleged, 
but what produced the zeal ? He says that it was derived from 
the Jewish religion, but neglects to point out what could have in¬ 
duced Gentiles of every diversity of origin to derive from a de¬ 
spised race tenets and sentiments which would make their lives 
one long scene of self-denial and danger. The whole vein of re¬ 
mark is so completely out of date, that it is not worth dwelling on, 
except very summarily. 

The second cause is “ the doctrine of a future life, improved by 
every additional circumstance which could give weight and efficacy 
to that important truth.” Again we have an effect treated as a 
cause. “ The ancient Christians were animated by a contempt for 
their present existence, and by a just confidence of immortality.” 
Very true; but the fact of their being so animated was what 
wanted explaining. Gibbon says it‘-'was no wonder that so ad¬ 
vantageous an offer as that of immortality was accepted. Yet he 
had just before told us that the ablest orators at the bar and in the 
senate of Rome, could expose this offer of immortality to ridicule 
without fear of giving offence. Whence arose, then, the sudden 
blaze of conviction with which the Christians embraced it? 

The third cause is the miraculous powers ascribed to the primi¬ 
tive Church. Gibbon apparently had not the courage to admit 
that he agreed with his friend Hume in rejecting miracles alto¬ 
gether. He conceals his drift in a cloud of words, suggesting in¬ 
directly with innuendo and sneer his real opinion. But this does 
not account for the stress he lays on the ascription of miracles. 
He seems to think that the claim of supernatural gifts somehow 
had the same efficacy as the gifts themselves would have had, if 
they had existed. 

The fourth cause is the virtues of the primitive Christians. 
The paragraphs upon it, Dean Milman considers the most uncan- 
did in all the history, and they certainly do Gibbon no credit. With 
a strange ignorance of the human heart, he attributes the austere 
morals of the early Christians to their care for their reputation. 
The ascetic temper, one of the most widely manifested in history, 
was beyond his comprehension. 

The fifth cause was the union and discipline of the Christian 
republic. For the last time the effect figures as the cause. Union 
and discipline we know are powerful, but we know also that they 
are the result of deep antecedent forces, and that prudence and 
policy alone never produced them. 

It can surprise no one that Gibbon has treated the early Church 
in a way which is highly unsatisfactory if judged by a modern 
standard. Not only is it a period which criticism has gone over 
again and again with a microscope, but the standpoint from which 
such periods are observed has materially changed since his da)*. 
That dim epoch of nascent faith, full of tender and subdued tints, 
with a high light on the brows of the Crucified, was not one in 
which he could .see clearly, or properly see at all. He has as little 



GIBBON. 


76 

insight into the religious condition of the pagan world, as of the 
Christian. It is singular how he passes over facts which were 
plain before him, which he knew quite well, as he knew nearly 
everything connected with his subject, but the real signficance of 
which he missed. Thus he attributes to the scepticism of the 
pagan world the easy introduction of Christianity. Misled by the 
“ eloquence of Cicero and the wit of Lucian,” he supposes the 
second century to have been vacant of beliefs, in which a “fashion 
of incredulity ” was widely diffused, and “many were almost dis¬ 
engaged from artificial prejudices.” He was evidently unaware of 
the striking religious revival which uplifted paganism in the age of 
Hadrian, and grew with the sinking empire : the first stirrings of 
it may even be discerned in Tacitus, and go on increasing till we 
reach the theurgy of the Neoplatonists. A growing fear of the 
gods, a weariness of life arid longing for death, a disposition to 
look for compensation for the miseries of this world to a brighter 
one beyond the grave—these traits are common in the literature of 
the second century, and show the change which had come over 
the minds of men. Gibbon is colour-blind to these shades of the 
religious spirit: he can only see the banter of Lucian.* In refer¬ 
ence to these matters he was a true son of his age, and could 
hardly be expected to transcend it. 

He cannot be cleared of this reproach. On the other hand, we 
must remember that Gibbon’s hard and accurate criticism set a 
good example in one respect. The fertile fancy of the middle 
ages had run into wild exaggerations of the number of the primi¬ 
tive martyrs, and their legends had not always been submitted to 
impartial scrutiny even in the eighteenth century. We may admit 
that Gibbon was not without bias of another kind, and that his 
tone is often very offensive when he seeks to depreciate the evi¬ 
dence of the sufferings of the early confessors. His computation, 
which will allow of “ an annual consumption of a hundred and fifty 
martyrs,” is nothing short of cynical. Still he did good service in 
insisting on chapter and verse and fair historical proof of these 
frightful stories, before they were admitted. Dean Milman ac¬ 
knowledges so much, and defends him against the hot zeal of M. 
Guizot, justly adding that “ truth must not be sacrificed even to 
well grounded moral indignation,” in which sentiment all now will 
no doubt be willing to concur. 

The difference between the Church in the Catacombs, and the 
Church in the Palaces at Constantinople or Ravenna, measures the 
difference between Gibbon’s treatment of early Christian history 
and his treatment of ecclesiastical history. Just as the simple- 
hearted emotions of God-fearing men were a puzzle and an irrita¬ 
tion to him, so he was completely at home in exposing the intrigues 
of courtly bishops and in the metaphysics of theological contro¬ 
versy. His mode of dealing with Church matters from this point 

* On the religious revival of the second century, see Hausrath’s NrutestamentlicJw 
Zeitgeschichte, vol. iii., especially the sections, “ Hadrian's Mysticismus ” and “ Reli.i - 
i8se Tendenzen in Kunst und Literatur,” where this interesting’subject is handled with 
a freshness and insight quite remarkable. 


GIBBON. 


77 

onward is hardly ever unfair, and has given rise to few protestations. 
He has not succeeded in pleasing everybody. What Church his¬ 
torian ever does ? But he is candid, impartial, and discerning. His 
account of the conversion of Constantine is remarkably just, and he 
is more generous to the first Christian Emperor than Niebuhr or 
Neander. He plunges into the Arian controversy with manifest 
delight, and has given in a few pages one of the clearest and most 
memorable risumis of that great struggle. But it is when he comes 
to the hero of that struggle, to an historic character who can be 
seen with clearness, that he shows his wonted tact and insight. A 
great man hardly ever fails to awaken Gibbon into admiration and 
sympathy. The <k Great Athanasius,” as he often calls him, caught 
his eye at once, and the impulse to draw a fine character promptlv 
silenced any prejudices which might interfere with faithful por¬ 
traiture. “ Athanasius stands out more grandly in Gibbon, than in 
: the pages of the orthodox ecclesiastical historians Dr. Newman 
has said,—a judge whose competence will not be questioned. And 
! ?s if to show how much insight depends on sympathy, Gibbon is 
: immediately more just and open to the merits of the Christian com- 
i munity, than he had been hitherto. He now sees “that the privi¬ 
leges of the Church had already revived a sense of order and free- 
j dom in the Roman government.” His chapter on the rise of mon- 
j asticism is more fair and discriminating than the average Protest¬ 
ant treatment of that subject. He distinctly acknowledges the 
debt we owe the monks for their attention to agriculture, the use¬ 
ful trades, and the preservation of ancient literature. The more 
disgusting forms of asceticism he touches with light irony, which is 
quite as effective as the .vehement denunciations of non-Catholic 
writers. It must not be forgotten that his ecclesiastical historv 
derives a great superiority of clearness and proportion by its inter¬ 
weaving with the general history of the times, and this fact of itself 
suffices to give Gibbon’s picture a permanent value even beside the 
master works of German erudition which have been devoted ex¬ 
clusively to Church matters. If we lay down Gibbon and take up 
Neander, for instance, we are conscious that with all the greater 
fulness of detail, engaging candour, and sympathetic insight of the 
great Berlin Professor, the general impression of the times is less 
distinct and lasting. There is no specialism in Gibbon ; his book is 
a broad sociological picture in which the whole age is portrayed. 

To sum up. In two memorable chapters Gibbon has allowed 
his prejudices to mar his work as an historian. But two chap¬ 
ters out of seventy-one constitute a small proportion. In the 
remainder of his work he- is as free from bias and unfairness as 
human frailty can well allow. The annotated editions of Milman 
and Guizot are guarantees of this. Their critical animadversions 
become very few and far between after the first volume is passed. 
If he had been animated by a polemical object in writing ; if he had 
used the past as an arsenal from which to draw weapons to attack 
the present, we may depend that a swift blight would have shrivelled 
his labours, as it did so many famous works of the eighteenth cen- 





7 8 


GIBBON. 


turv when the great day of reaction set .n. His mild rebuke of 
the^Abbd Raynal should not be forgotten. He admired the His¬ 
tory of the Indies. It is one of the few books that he has honoured 
with mention and praise in the text of his own work. But he points 
out that the “ zeal of the philosophic historian for the rights of man¬ 
kind ” had led him into a blunder. It was not only Gibbons 
scholarly accuracy which saved him from such blunders. Perhaps 
he had less zeal for the rights of mankind than men like Raynal 
whose general views he shared. But it is certain that he cud no 
write with their settled parti pris of making history a vehicle of 
controversy. His object was to be a faithful historian, and due re¬ 
gard being: had to his limitations, he attained to it. 

If we now consider the defects of the Decline and Fall which 
the progress of historic study, and still more the lapse of time, have 
Gradually rendered visible, they will be found, as was to be ex¬ 
pected, to consist in the author’s limited conception of society, and 
of the multitudinous forces which mould and modify it. We are 
constantly reminded by the tone of remark that lie sees chiefly the 
surface of events, and that the deeper causes which produce them 
have not been seen with the same clearness. In proportion as an age 
is remote, and therefore different from that in which a historian writes, 
does it behove him to remember that the social and general side of 
history is more important than the individual and particular. In 
reference to a period adjacent to our own the fortunes of individuals 
properly take a prominent place, the social conditions amid which 
they worked are familiar to us, and we understand them and their 
position without effort. But with regard to a remote age the case 
is different. Here our difficulty is to understand the social condi¬ 
tions, so unlike those with which we are acquainted, and as society 
is greater than man, so we feel that society, and not individual 
men, should occupy the chief place in the picture. Not that indi¬ 
viduals are to be suppressed or neglected, but their subordination 
to the large historic background must be well maintained. The 
social, religious, and philosophic conditions amid which they played 
their parts should dominate the scene, and dwarf by their grandeur 
and importance the human actors who move across it. The higher 
historical style now demands what may be called compound narrative, 
that is narrative having reference to two sets of phenomena—one the 
obvious surface events, the other the larger and wider, but less 
obvious, sociological condition. A better example could fferdfy' be 
given than Grote’s account of the mutilation of the Hermae. The 
fact of the mutilation is told in the briefest way in a few lines, but 
the social condition which overarched it, and made the disfiguring 
of a number of half-statues “ one of the most extraordinary events 
in Greek history,” demands five pages of reflections and com¬ 
mentary to bring out its full significance. Grote insists on the 
duty “ to take reasonable pains to realise in our minds the religious 
and political associations of the Athenians,” and helps us to do it 
by a train of argument and illustration. The larger part of the 
strength of the modern historical school lies in this method and in 
able hands it has produced great results. 


GIBBON. 


79 

Tt would be unfair to compare Gibbon to these writers. They 
had a training in social studies which he had not. But it is not 
certain that he has always acquitted himself well, even if compared 
to his contemporaries and predecessors, Montesquieu, Mably, and 
Voltaire. In any case his narrative is generally wanting in historic 
perspective and suggestive background. It adheres closely to the 
obvious surface of events with little attempt to place behind them 
the deeper sky of social evolution. In many of his crowded chap¬ 
ters one cannot see the wood for the trees. The story is not 
lifted up and made lucid by general points of view, but drags or 
hurries along in the hollow of events, over which the author never 
seems to raise himself into a position of commanding survey. The 
thirty-sixth chapter is a marked instance of this defect. But the 
defect is general. The vigorous and skilful narrative, and a cer¬ 
tain grandeur and weightiness of language, make us overlook it. 
It is only when we try to attain clear and succinct, views, which 
condense into portable propositions the enormous mass of facts 
collected before us, that we feel that the writer has not often sur¬ 
veyed his subject from a height and distance sufficient to allow the 
great features of the epoch to be seen in bold outline. By the 
side of the history of concrete events, we miss the presentation of 
those others which are none the less events for being vague, irreg¬ 
ular, and wide-reaching, and requiring centuries for their accom¬ 
plishment. Gibbon’s manner of dealing with the first is always 
good, and sometimes consummate, and equal to anything in his¬ 
torical literature. The thirty-first chapter, with its description of 
Rome, soon to fall a prey to the Goths and Alaric, is a masterpiece, 
artistic and spacious in the highest degree; though it is unneces¬ 
sary to cite particular instances, as nearly every chapter contains 
passages of admirable historic power. But the noble flood of 
narrative never stops in meditative pause to review the situation, 
and point out with pregnant brevity what is happening in the sum 
total, abstraction made of all confusing details. Besides the facts 
of the time, we seek to have the tendencies of the age brought 
before us in their flow and expansion, the filiation of events over 
long periods deduced in clear sequence, a synoptical view which 
is to the mind what a picture is to the eye. In this respect Gibbon’s 
method leaves not a little to be desired. 

Take for instance two of the most important aspects of the sub¬ 
ject that he treated : the barbarian invasions, and the cause of the 
decline and fall of the Roman empire. To the concrete side of 
both he has done ample justice. The rational and abstract Side of 
neither has received the attention from him which it deserved. On 
the interesting question of the introduction of the barbarians into 
the frontier provinces, and their incorporation into the legions, he 
never seems to have quite made up his mind. In the twelfth 
chapter he calls it a “ great and beneficial plan.” Subsequently 
he calls it a disgraceful and fatal expedient. He recurs frequently 
to the subject in isolated passages, but never collects the facts 
into a focus, with a view of deducing their real meaning. Yet the 


8o 


GIBBON. 


point is second to none in importance. Its elucidation throws 
more light on the fall of Rome than any other considerations what¬ 
ever. The question is, Whether Rome was conquered by the 
barbarians in the ordinary sense of the word, conquered. We 
know that it was not, and Gibbon knew that it was not. Yet per¬ 
haps most people rise from reading his book with an impression 
that the empire succumbed to the invasion of the barbarians, as 
Carthage, Gaul, and Greece had succumbed to the invasion of the 
Romans; that the struggle lay between classic Rome and outside 
uncivilised foes; and that after two centuries of hard fighting the 
latter were victorious. The fact that the struggle lay between 
barbarians, who were within and friendly to the empire, and 
barbarians who were without it, and hostile rather to their more 
fortunate brethren, than to the empire which employed them, is 
implicitly involved in Gibbon’s narrative, but it is not explicitly 
brought out. Romanised Goths, Vandals, and Franks were the 
defenders, nearly {he only defenders, of the empire against other 
tribes and nations who were not Romanised, and nothing can be 
more plain than that Gibbon saw this as well as any one since, but 
he has not set it forth with prominence and clearness. With his 
complete mastery of the subject he would have done it admirably, 
if he had assumed the necessary point of view. 

Similarly, with regard to the causes of the fall of the empire. 
It is quite evident that he was not at all unconscious of the deep 
economic and social vices which undermined the great fabric. 
Depopulation, decay of agriculture, fiscal oppression, the general 
prostration begotten of despotism—all these sources of the great 
collapse may be traced in his text, or his wonderful notes, hinted 
very often with a flashing insight which anticipates the most recent 
inquiries into the subject. But these considerations are not brought 
together to a luminous point, nor made to yield clear and tangible 
results. They lie scattered, isolated, and barren over three vol¬ 
umes, and are easily overlooked. One may say that generalised 
and synthetic views are conspicuous by their absence in Gibbon. 

But what of that ? These reflections, even if they be weL'. 
founded, hardly dim the majesty of the Decline and Fall. The 
book is such a marvel of knowledge at once wide and minute, that 
even now, after numbers of labourers have gone over the same 
ground, with only special objects in view, small segments of the 
great circle which Gibbon fills alone, his word is still one of the 
weightiest that can be quoted. Modern research has unquestion¬ 
ably opened out points of view to which he did not attain. But 
when it comes to close investigation of any particular question, we 
rarely fail to find that he has seen it, dropped some pregnant hint 
about it, more valuable than the dessertations of other men. As 
Mr. Freeman says, “ Whatever else is read, Gibbon must be read 
too.” 


GIBBON. 


Si 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE LAST TEN YEARS OF HIS LIFE IN LAUSANNE. 

After the preliminary troubles which met him on his arrival at 
Lausanne, Gibbon had four years of unbroken calm and steady 
work, of which there is nothing to record beyond the fact that they 
were filled with peaceful industry. “One day,” he wrote, “glides 
by another in tranquil uniformity.” During the whole period he 
never stirred ten miles out of Lausanne. He had nearly completed 
the fourth volume before he left England. Then came an inter¬ 
ruption of a year—consumed in the break-up of his London estab¬ 
lishment, his journey, the transport of his library, the delay in get¬ 
ting settled at Lausanne. Then he sat down in grim earnest to 
finish his task, and certainly the speed he used, considering the 
quality of the work, left nothing to be desired. He achieved the 
fifth volume in twenty-one months, and the sixth in little more than 
a year. He had hoped to finish sooner, but it is no wonder that he 
found his work grow under his hands when he passed from design 
to execution. “ A long while ago, when I contemplated the dis¬ 
tant prospect of my work,” he writes to Lord Sheffield, “ I gave you 
and myself some hopes of landing in England last autumn ; but 
alas ! when autumn grew near, hills began to rise on hills, Alps on 
Alps, and I found my journey far more tedious and toilsome than 
I had imagined. When I look back on the length of the undertak¬ 
ing and the variety of materials, I cannot accuse or suffer myself to 
be accused of idleness; yet it appeared that unless I doubled mv 
diligence, another year, and perhaps more, would elapse before I 
could embark with my complete manuscript. Under these circum¬ 
stances I took, and am still executing, a bold and meritorious res¬ 
olution. The mornings in winter, and in a country of early din¬ 
ners, are very concise. To them, my usual period of study, I now 
frequently add the evenings, renounce cards and society, refuse 
the most agreeable evenings, or perhaps make my appearance at a 
late supper. By this extraordinary industry, which I never prac¬ 
tised before, and to which I hope never to be again reduced, I see 
the last part of my history growing apace under my hands.” He 
was indeed, as he said, now straining for the goal which was at last 
reached “ on the day, or rather the night, of the 27th of June, 1787. 
Between the hours of eleven and twelve I wrote the last lines of 

6 


84 


GIBBON. 


the last page in a summer-house in my garden. After laym down 
ray pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of aca¬ 
cias which commands a prospect of the country, tne lake, and the 
mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver 
orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was 
silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the re¬ 
covery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. 
But ray pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was 
spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting 
leave of an old and agreeable companion, and whatsoever might be 
the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must be short 


and precarious.” „ , 

A faint streak of poetry occasionally shoots across Gibbon s 
prose. But both prose and poetry had now to yield to stern busi¬ 
ness The printing of three quarto volumes in those days of 
handpresses was a formidable undertaking, and unless expedition 
were used the publishing season of the ensuing year would be lost. 

A month had barely elapsed before Gibbon, with his precious cargo 
started for England. He went straight to his printers. The print¬ 
ing of the fourth volume occupied three months, and both author 
and publisher were warned that their common interest required a 
quicker pace. Then Mr. Strahan “fulfilled his engagement, which 
few printers could sustain, of delivering every week three thousand 
copies of nine sheets.” On the 8th of May, 1788, the three con¬ 
cluding volumes were published, and Gibbon had discharged his 
debt for the entertainment that he had had in this world. 

He returned as speedily as he could to Lausanne, to rest from 
his labours. But he had a painful greeting in the sadly altered look 
of his friend Deyverdun. Soon an apoplectic seizure confirmed 
his forebodings, and within a twelvemonth the friend of his youth, 
whom he had loved for thirty-three years, was taken away by death 
July 4, 1789).* 

Gibbon never got over this loss. His staid and solid nature 
was not given to transports of joy or grief. But his constant 
references to “poor Deyverdun,” and the vacancy caused by his 
loss, show the depth of the wound. “ I want to change the scene,” 
he writes, “and, beautiful as the garden and prospect must appear 
to every eye, I feel that the state of my mind casts a gloom over 
them : every spot, every walk, every bench recalls the memory of 
those hours, those conversations, which will return no more. . . . 
I almost hesitate whether I shall run over to England to consult 
with you on the spot, and to fly from poor Deyverdun’s shade, which 
meets me at every turn.” Not that he lacked attached friends, 
and of mere society and acquaintance he had more than abund¬ 
ance. He occupied at Lausanne a position of almost patriarchal 


* The letter in which Gibbon communicated the sad news to Lord Sheffield was 
written on the 14th July, 1789, the day of the talcing of the Bastille. So “ that evening 
sun of July ” sent its beams on Gibbon mourning the dead friend, as well as on “ reapers 
amid peaceful woods and fields, on old women spinning in cottages, on ships far out on 
the silent main, on balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where high-rouged daines of the 
9alace are even now dancing with double-jacketed Hussar officers.” 


G1BBCW. 


§3 

dignity, “and may be said/’ writes Lord Sheffield, “ to have almost 
given the law to a set of as willing subjects as any man ever pre¬ 
sided over.” Soon the troubles in France sent wave after wave of 
emigrants over the frontiers, and Lausanne had its full share of the 
exiles. After a brief approval of the reforms in France he passed 
rapidly to doubt, disgust, and horror at the “new birth of time” 
there. “ You will allow me to be a tolerable historian,” he wrote to 
his stepmother, “ yet on a fair review of ancient and modern times I 
can find none that bear any affinity to the present.” The last 
social evolution was beyond his power of classification. The min¬ 
gled bewilderment and*anger with which he looks out from Lau¬ 
sanne on the revolutionary welter, form an almost amusing contrast 
to his usual apathy on political matters. He is full of alarm lest 
England should catch the revolutionary fever. He is delighted with 
Burke’s ReJiectio?is. “ I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, 

I adore his chivalry, and I can forgive even his superstition.” His 
wrath waxes hotter at every post. “Poor France ! The state is 
dissolved ! the nation is mad.” At last nothing but vituperation 
can express his feelings, and he roundly calls the members of the 
Convention “devils,” and discovers that “ democratical principles 
lead by a path of flowers into the abyss of hell.” 

In 1790 his friends the Neckers had fled to Switzerland, and on 
every ground of duty and inclination he was called upon to show 
them the warmest welcome, and he did so in a way that excited 
their liveliest gratitude. Necker was cast down in utter despair, 
not only for the loss of place and power, but on account of the 
strong animosity which was shown to him by the exiled French., 
none of whom would set their foot in his house. The Neckers 
were now Gibbon’s chief inmates till the end of his sojourn in 
Switzerland. They lived at Coppet, and constant visits were ex¬ 
changed there and at Lausanne. Madame Necker wrote to him 
frequent letters, which prove that if she had ever had any griev¬ 
ance to complain of in the past, it was not only forgiven, but 
entirely forgotten. The letters, indeed, testify a warmth of senti¬ 
ment on her part which, coming from a lady of less spotless pro¬ 
priety, would almost imply a revival of youthful affection for her 
early lover. “ You have always been dear to me,” she writes, “ but 
the'friendship you have shown to M. Necker adds to that which 
you inspire me with on so many grounds, and I love you at present 
with a double affection.”—“ Come to us when you are restored to 
health and to yourself; that moment should always belong to your 
first and your last friend (amie), and I do not know which of those 
titles is the sweetest and dearest to my heart.Near you, the 
recollections you recalled were pleasant to me, and you connected 
them easily with present impressions ; the chain of years seemed 
to link all times together with electrical rapidity; you were at once 
twenty and fifty years old for me. Away from you the different 
places which Ihave inhabited are only the milestones of my life, 
telling me of the distance I have come.” With much more in the 
same strain. Of Madame de Stael Gibbon does not speak in very 







GIBBON. 


84 

warm praise. Her mother, who was far from being contented with 
her, may perhaps have prejudiced him against hen In one letter 
to him she complains of her daughter’s conduct in no measuied 
terms. Yet Gibbon owns that Madame de Stael was a ‘ pleasant 
little woman ; ” and in another place says that she was “ wild, vain, 
but ffood-natured, with a much larger provision of wit than ot 
beauty.” One wonders if he ever knew of her childish scheme of 
marrying him in order that her parents might have the pleasure of 
his company and conversation. 

These closing years of Gibbon’s life were not happy, through 
no fault of his. No man was less inclined by disposition to look 
at the dark side of things. But heavy blows fell on him in quick 
succession. His health was seriously impaired, and he was often 
laid up for months with the gout. His neglect of exercise, had 
produced its effect, and he had become a prodigy of unwieldy 
corpulency. Unfortunately his digestion seems to have continued 
too good, and neither his own observation nor the medical science 
of that day sufficed to warn him against certain errors of regimen 
which were really fatal. All this time, while the gout was con¬ 
stantly torturing him, he drank Madeira freely. There is frequent 
question of a pipe of that sweet wine in his correspondence with 
Lord Sheffield. He cannot bear the thought of being without a 
sufficient supply, as “good Madeira is now become essential to his 
health and reputation.” The last three years of his residence at 
Lausanne were agitated by perpetual anxiety and dread of an in¬ 
vasion of French democratic principles, or even of French troops. 
Reluctance to quit “ his paradise ” keeps him still, but he is always 
wondering how soon he will have to fly, and often regrets that he 
has not done so already. “ For my part,” he writes, “ till Geneva 
falls, I do not think of a retreat; but at all events I am provided 
with two strong horses and a hundred louis in gold.” Fate was hard 
on the kindly epicurean, who after his long toil had made his bed 
in the sun, on which he was preparing to lie down in genial content 
till the end came. But he feels he must not think of rest; and 
that heavy as he is, and irksome to him as it is to move, he must 
before long be a rover again. Still he is never peevish upon his 
fortunes ; he puts the best face on things as long as they will 
bear it. 

He was not so philosophical under the bereavements that he 
now suffered. His aunt, Mrs. Porten, had died in 1786. He de¬ 
plored her as he was bound to do, and feelingly regrets and blames 
himself for not having written to her as often as he might have 
done since their last parting. Then came the irreparable loss of 
Deyverdun Shortly, an old Lausanne friend, M. de Severy, to 
whom he was much attached, died after a long illness. Lastly, and 
suddenly, came the death of Lacly Sheffield, the wife of his friend 
Holroyd, with whom he had long lived on such intimate terms that 
he was in the habit of calling her his sister. The Sheffields, father 
and mother and two daughters, had spent the summer of 1791 with 
him at Lausanne. The visit was evidently an occasion ©f real 


GIBBON. 


85 

happiness and dpanche/nent de cosur to the two old friends, and 
supplied Gibbon for nearly two years with tender regrets and recol¬ 
lections. Then, without any warning, he heard of Lady Sheffield ; s 
death. In a moment his mind was made up : he would go at once 
to console his friend. All the fatigue and irksomeness of the 
journey to one so ailing and feeble, all the dangers of the road 
lined and perhaps barred by hostile armies, vanished on the spot. 
Within twelve days he had made his preparations and started on 
his journey. He was forced to travel through Germany, and in 
his ignorance of the language he required an interpreter; young 
de Severy, the son of his deceased friend, joyfully, and out of mere 
affection for him, undertook the office of courier. “ His attach¬ 
ment to me,” wrote Gibbon, “is the sole motive which prompts 
him to undertake this troublesome journey.” It is clear that he 
had the art of making himself loved. He travelled through 
Frankfort, Cologne, Brussels, Ostend, and was by his friend’s side 
in little more than a month after he had received the fatal tidings. 
Well might Lord Sheffield say, “ I must ever regard it as the most 
enduring proof of his sensibility, and of his possessing the true 
spirit of friendship, that, after having relinquished the thought of 
his intended visit, he hastened to England, in spite of increasing 
impediments, to soothe me by the most generous sympathy, and 
to alleviate my domestic affliction; neither his great corpulency 
nor his extraordinary bodily infirmities, nor any other consider¬ 
ation, could prevent him a moment from resolving on an under¬ 
taking that might have deterred the most active young man. He 
almost immediately, with an alertness by no means natural to him, 
undertook a great circuitous journey along the frontier of an enemy 
worse than savage, within the sound of their cannon, within the 
range of the light troops of the different armies, and through roads 
ruined by the enormous machinery of war.” 

In this public and private gloom he bade for ever farewell to 
Lausanne. He was himself rapidly approaching 


“ The dark portal, 

Goal of all mortal,” 

but of this he knew not as yet. While he is in the house of mourn¬ 
ing, beside his bereaved friend, we will return for a short space to 
consider the conclusion of his great work. 



86 


GIBBON . 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE LAST THREE VOLUMES OF THE DECLINE AND FALL. 

The thousand years between the fifth and the fifteenth century 
comprise the middle age, a period which only recently, through 
utterly inadequate conceptions of social growth, was wont to be 
called the dark ages. That long epoch of travail and growth, 
during which the old field of civilisation was broken up and sown 
afresh with new and various seed unknown to antiquity, receives 
now on all hands due recognition, as being one of the most rich, 
fertile, and interesting in the history of man. The all-embracing 
despotism of Rome was replaced by the endless local divisions 
and subdivisions of feudal tenure. The multiform rites and beliefs 
of polytheism were replaced by the single faith and paramount 
authority of the Catholic Church. The philosophies of Greece 
were dethroned, and the scholastic theology reigned in their stead. 
The classic tongues crumbled away, and out of their dlbris arose 
the modern idioms of France, Italy, and Spain, to which were 
added in Northern Europe the new forms of Teutonic speech. 
The fine and useful arts took a new departure; slavery was miti¬ 
gated into serfdom; industry and commerce became powers in the 
world as they had never been before; the narrow municipal polity 
of the old world was in time succeeded by the broader national 
institutions based on various forms of representation. Gun¬ 
powder, America, and the art of printing were discovered, and the 
most civilised portion of mankind passed insensibly into the 
modern era. 

Such was the wide expanse which spread out before Gibbon 
when he resolved to continue his work from the fall of the Western 
Empire to the capture of Constantinople. Indeed his glance took 
in a still wider field, as he was concerned as much with the decay 
of Eastern as of Western Rome, and the long-retarded fall of the 
former demanded large attention to the Oriental populations who 
assaulted the city and remaining empire of Constantine. So bold 
an historic enterprise was never conceived as when, standing on 
the limit of antiquity in the fifth century, he determined to pursue 
in rapid but not hasty survey the great'lines of events for a thou¬ 
sand years, to follow in detail the really great transactions while 
discarding the less important, thereby giving prominence and clear¬ 
ness to what is memorable, and reproducing on a small scale the 
flow of time through the ages. It is to this portion of Gibbon’s 


GIBBON. 


87 

work that the happy comparison has been made, that it resembles 
a magnificent Roman aqueduct spanning over the chasm which 
separates the ancient from the modern" world. In these latter 
volumes he frees himself from the trammels of regular annalistic 
narrative, deals with events in broad masses according to their 
importance, expanding or contracting his story as occasion re¬ 
quires; now painting in large panoramic view the events of a few 
years, now compressing centuries into brief outline. Many of his 
massive chapters afford materials for volumes, and are well worthy 
of a fuller treatment than he could give without deranging his 
plan. But works of greater detail and narrower compass can 
never compete with Gibbon’s history, any more than a county 
map can compete with a map of England or of Europe. 

The variety of the contents of these last three volumes is 
amazing, especially when the thoroughness and perfection of the 
workmanship are considered. Prolix compilations or sketchy out¬ 
lines of universal history have their use and place, but they are re¬ 
moved by many degrees from the Decline and Fall , or rather they 
belong to another species of authorship. It is not only that 
Gibbon combines width and depth, that the extent of his learning 
is as wonderful as its accuracy, though in this respect he has 
hardly a full rival in literature. The quality which places him not 
only in the first rank of historians, but in a class by himself, and 
makes him greater than the greatest, lies in his supreme power of 
moulding into lucid and coherent unity, the manifold and rebellious 
mass of his multitudinous materials, of coercing his divergent 
topics into such order that they seem spontaneously to grow like 
branches out of one stem, clear and visible to the mind. There is 
something truly epic in these latter volumes. Tribes, nations, and 
empires are the characters ; one after another they come forth like 
Homeric heroes, and do their mighty deeds before the assembled 
armies. The grand and lofty chapters on Justinian; on the 
Arabs ; on the Crusades, have a rounded completeness, coupled 
with such artistic subordination to the main action, that they read 
more like cantos of a great prose poem than the ordinary staple of 
historical composition. It may well be questioned whether there is 
another instance of such high literary form and finish, coupled 
with such vast erudition. And two considerations have to be 
borne in mind, which heighten Gibbon’s merit in this respect, 
(r.) Almost the whole of his subject had been as yet untouched 
by any preceding writer of eminence, and he had no stimulus or 
example from his precursors. He united thus in himself the two 
characters of pioneer and artist. (2.) The barbarous and im¬ 
perfect nature of the materials with which he chiefly had to work, 
—dull inferior writers, whose debased style was their least defect. 
A historian who has for his authorities masters of reason and 
language such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, and Tacitus is 
borne up by their genius; apt quotation and translation alone 
suffice to produce considerable effects ; or in the case of subjects 
taken from modern times, weighty state papers, eloquent debates, 


88 


GIBBON 


or finished memoirs supply ample materials for graphic narrative. 
But Gibbon had little but dross to deal with. Yet he has smelted 
and cast it into the grand shapes we see. 

The fourth volume is nearly confined to the reign, or rather 
epoch, of Justinian,—a magnificent subject, which he has painted 
in his loftiest style of gorgeous narrative. The campaigns of Beli- 
sarius and Narses are related with a clearness and vigour that 
make us feel that Gibbon’s merits as a military historian have not 
been quite sufficiently recognised. He had from the time of his 
service in the militia taken continued interest in tactics and all 
that was connected with the military art. It was no idle boast 
when he said that the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers had not 
been useless to the historian of the Roman empire. Military mat¬ 
ters perhaps occupy a somewhat excessive space in his pages. 
Still, if the operations of war are to be related, it is highly impor¬ 
tant that they should be treated with intelligence, and knowledge 
how masses of men are moved, and by a writer to whom the various 
incidents of the camp, the march, and the bivouac, are not matters 
of mere hearsay, but of personal experience. The campaign of 
Belisarius in Africa may be quoted as an example. 

“ In the seventh year of the reign of Justinian, and about the time of 
the summer solstice, the whole fleet of six hundred ships was ranged in 
martial pomp before the gardens of the palace. The patriarch pronounced 
his benediction, the emperor signified his last commands, the general’s 
trumpet gave the signal of departure, and every heart, according to its 
fears or wishes, explore’d with anxious curiosity the omens of misfortune 
or success. The first halt was made at Perintheus, or Heraclea, where 
Belisarius waited five days to receive some Thracian horses, a military 
gift of his sovereign. From thence the fleet pursued their course through 
the midst of the Propontis ; but as they struggled to pass the straits of 
the Hellespont, an unfavourable wind detained them four days at Abydos, 
where the general exhibited a remarkable lesson of firmness and severity. 
Two of the Huns who, in a drunken quarrel, had slain one of their fellow- 
soldiers, were instantly shown to the army suspended on a lofty gibbet. The 
national dignity was resented by their countrymen, who disclaimed the 
servile laws of the empire and asserted the free privileges of Scythia, 
where a small fine was allowed to expiate the sallies of intemperance and 
anger. Their complaints were specious, their clamours were loud, and the 
Romans were not averse to the example of disorder and impunity. But 
the rising sedition was appeased by the authority and eloquence of the 
general, and he represented to the assembled troops the obligation of 
justice, the importance of discipline, the rewards of piety and virtue, and 
the unpardonable guilt of murder, which, in his apprehension, was aggra¬ 
vated rather than excused by the vice of intoxication. * In the navigation 
from the Hellespont, to the Peloponnesus, which the Greeks after the 
siege of Troy had performed in four days, the fleet of Belisarius was 
guided in their course by his master-galley, conspicuous in the day by the 
redness of the sails, and in the night by torches blazing from the mast¬ 
head. It was the duty of the pilots as they steered between the islands 
and turned the capes of Malea and Taenarium to preserve the just order 
and regular intervals of such a multitude. As the wind was fair and 
moderate, their labours were not unsuccessful, and the troops were safely 


GIBBON. 


89 

disembarked at Methone, on the Messenian coast, to repose themselves for 
a while after the fatigues of the sea. . . . From the port of Methone the 
pilots steered along the western coast of Peloponnesus, as far as the is¬ 
land of Zacynthus, or Zante, before they undertook the voyage (in their 
eyes a most arduous voyage) of one hundred leagues over the Ionian sea. 
As the fleet was surprised by a calm, sixteen days were consumed in the 
slow navigation. . . At length the harbour of Caucana, on the southern 
side of Sicily, afforded a secure and hospitable shelter. . . Belisarius de¬ 
termined to hasten his operations, and his wise impatience was seconded 
by the winds. The fleet lost sight of Sicily, passed before the island of 
Malta, discovered the capes of Africa, ran along the coast with a strong 
gale from the north-east, and finally cast anchor at the promontory of 
Caput Vada, about five days journey to the south of Carthage. 

“ Three months after their departure from Constantinople, the men and 
the horses, the arms and the military stores were safely disembarked, and 
five soldiers were left as a guard on each of the ships, which were dis¬ 
posed in the form of a semicircle. The remainder of the troops occupied 
a camp on the seashore, which they fortified, according to ancient discip¬ 
line, with a ditch and rampart, and the discovery of a source of fresh 
water, while it allayed the thirst, excited the superstitious confidence of the 
Romans. . . The small town of Sullecte, one day’s journey from the 
camp, had the honour of being foremost to open her gates and resume her 
ancient allegiance ; the larger cities of Leptis and Adrumetum imitated 
the example of loyalty as soon as Belisarius appeared, and he advanced 
without opposition as far as Grasse, a palace of the Vandal kings, at the 
distance of fifty miles from Carthage. The weary Romans indulged them¬ 
selves in the refreshment of shady groves, cool fountains, and delicious 
fruits. . . In three generations prosperity and a warm climate had dis¬ 
solved the hardy virtue of the Vandals, who insensibly became the most 
luxurious of mankind. In their villas and gardens, which might deserve 
the Persian name of Paradise, they enjoyed a cool and elegant repose, and 
after the daily use of the bath, the barbarians were seated at a table pro¬ 
fusely spread with the delicacies of the land and sea. Their silken robes, 
loosely flowing after the fashion of the Medes, were embroidered with gold, 
love and hunting were the labours of their life, and their vacant hours 
were amused by pantomimes, chariot-races, and the music and dances of 
the theatre. 

“ In a march of twelve days the vigilance of Belisarius was constantly 
awake and active against his unseen enemies, by whom in every place and 
at every hour he might be suddenly attacked. An officer of confidence 
and merit, John the Armenian, led the vanguard of three hundred horse. 
Six hundred Massagetae covered at a certain distance the left flank, and 
the whole fleet, steering along the coast, seldom lost sight of the army, 
which moved each day about twelve miles, and lodged in the evening in 
strong camps or in friendly towns. The near approach of the Romans to 
Carthage filled the mind of Gelimer with anxiety and terror. 

“ Yet-the authority and promises of Gelimer collected a formidable 
army, and his plans were concerted with some degree of military skill. An 
order was despatched to his brother Ammatas to collect all the forces of 
Carthage, and to encounter the van of the Roman army at the distance of 
ten miles from the city: his nephew Gibamund with two thousand horse 
was destined to attack their left, when the monarch himself, who silently 
followed, should charge their rear in a situation which excluded them from 
the aid and even the view of their fleet. But the rashness of Ammatas 
was fatal to himself and his country. He anticipated the hour of attack, 





9° 


GIBBON. 


outstripped his tardy followers, and was pierced with a mortal wound, after 
he had slain with his own hand twelve of his boldest antagonists. His 
Vandals fled to Carthage : the highway, almost ten miles, was strewn with 
dead bodies, and it seemed incredible that such multitudes could be 
slaughtered by the swords of three hundred Romans. The nephew of Geli- 
mer was defeated after a slight combat by the six hundred Massagetae; 
they did not equal the third part of his numbers, but each Scythian was 
fired by the example of his chief, who gloriously exercised the privilege of 
his family by riding foremost and alone to shoot the first arrow against the 
enemy. In the meantime Gelimer himself, ignorant of the event, and mis¬ 
guided by the windings of the hills, inadvertently passed the Roman army 
and reached the scene of action where Ammatas had fallen. He wept the 
fate of his brother and of Carthage, charged with irresistible fury the ad¬ 
vancing squadrons, and might have pursued and perhaps decided the vic¬ 
tory, if he had not wasted those inestimable moments in the discharge of a 
vain though pious duty to the dead. While his spirit was broken by this 
mournful office, he heard the trumpet of Belisarius, who, leaving Antonina 
and his infantry in the camp, pressed forward with his guards and the re¬ 
mainder of the cavalry to rally his flying troops, and to restore the fortune 
of the day. Much room could not be found in this disorderly battle for 
the talents of a general ; but the king fled before the hero, and the Van¬ 
dals, accustomed only to a Moorish enemy, were incapable of withstanding 

the arms and the discipline of the Romans. 

“ As soon as the tumult had subsided, the several parts of the army 
informed each other of the accidents of the day, and Belisarius pitched 
his camp on the field of victory, to which the tenth milestone from Car¬ 
thage had applied the Latin appellation of Decimus. From a wise sus¬ 
picion of the stratagems and resources of the Vandals, he marched the 
next day in the order of battle; halted in the evening before the gates of 
Carthage, and allowed a night of repose, that he might not, in darkness 
and disorder, expose the city to the licence of the soldiers, or the soldiers 
themselves to the secret ambush of the city. But as the fears of Beli¬ 
sarius were the result of calm and intrepid reason, he was soon satisfied 
that he might confide without danger in the peaceful and friendly aspect 
of the capital. Carthage blazed with innumerable torches, the signal of 
the public joy; the chain was removed that guarded the entrance of the 
port, the gates were thrown open, and the people with acclamations of 
gratitude hailed and invited their Roman deliverers. The defeat of the 
Vandals and the freedom of Africa were announced to the city on the eve 
of St. Cyprian, when the churches were already adorned and illuminated 
for the festival of the martyr whom three centuries of superstition had al¬ 
most raised to a local deity. . . One awful hour reversed the fortunes of 
the contending parties. The suppliant Vandals, who had so lately in¬ 
dulged the vices of conquerors, sought an humble refuge in the sanctuary 
of the church; while the merchants of the east were delivered from the 
deepest dungeon of the palace by their affrighted keeper, who implored 
the protection of his captives, and showed them through an aperture in 
the wall the sails of the Roman fleet. After their separation from the 
army, the naval commanders had proceeded with slow caution along the 
coast, till they reached the Hermsean promontory, and obtained the first 
intelligence of the victory of Belisarius. Faithful to his instructions they 
would have cast anchor about twenty miles from Carthage, if the more 
skilful had not represented the perils of the shore and the signs of an im¬ 
pending tempest. Still ignorant of the revolution, they declined however 
the rash attempt ®f forcing the chain ef the port, and the adjacent bar- 



G/B BON 


9< 


bour and suburb of Mandracium were insulted only by the rapine of a pri¬ 
vate officer, who disobeyed and deserted his leaders! But the imperial 
fleet, advancing with a fair wind, steered through the narrow entrance of 
the Goletta and occupied the deep and capacious lake of Tunis, a secure 
station about five miles from the capital. No sooner was Belisarius in¬ 
formed of the arrival than he despatched orders that the greatest part 
of the mariners should be immediately landed to join the triumph and to 
swell the apparent numbers of the Romans. Before he allowed them to 
enter the gates of Carthage he exhorted them, in a discourse worthy of 
himself and the occasion, not to disgrace the glory of their arms, and to 
remember that the Vandals had been the tyrants, but that they were the 
detiverers of the Africans, who must now be respected as the voluntary 
and affectionate subjects of their common sovereign. The Romans 
marched through the streets in close ranks, prepared for battle if an 
enemy had appeared; the strict order maintained by their general im¬ 
printed on their minds the duty of obedience: and in an age in which cus¬ 
tom and impunity almost sanctified the abuse of conquest, the genius of 
one man repressed the passions of a victorious army. The Voice of men¬ 
ace and complaint was silent, the trade of Carthage was not interrupted , 
while Africa changed her master and her government, the shops con¬ 
tinued open and busy; and the soldiers, after sufficient guards had been 
posted, modestly departed to the houses which had been allotted for their 
reception. Belisarius fixed his residence in the palace, seated himself on 
the throne of Genseric, accepted and distributed the barbaric spoil, granted 
their lives to the suppliant Vandals, and laboured to restore the damage 
which the suburb of Mandracium had sustained in the preceding night. 
At supper he entertained his principal officers with the form and mag¬ 
nificence of a royal banquet. The victor was respectfully served by the 
captive officers of the household, and in the moments of festivity, when 
the impartial spectators applauded the fortune and merit of Belisarius, 
his envious flatterers secretly shed their venom on every word and ges¬ 
ture which might alarm the suspicions of a jealous monarch. One day 
was given to these pompous scenes, which may not be despised as useless 
if they attracted the popular veneration ; but the active mind of Belisarius, 
which in the pride of victory could suppose defeat, had already resolved 
that the Roman empire in Africa should not depend on the chance of 
arms or the favour of the people. The fortifications of Carthage had 
alone been excepted from the general proscription ; but in the reign of 
ninety-five years they were suffered to decay by the thoughtless and in¬ 
dolent Vandals. A wiser conqueror restored with incredible despatch 
the walls and ditches of the city. His liberality encouraged the workmen ; 
the soldiers, the mariners, and the citizens vied with each other in the sal¬ 
utary labour; and Gelimer, who had feared to trust his person in an open 
town, beheld with astonishment and despair the ris'ng strength of an im¬ 
pregnable fortress.” 

.But we have hardly finished admiring the brilliant picture of the 
conquest of Africa and Italy, before Gibbon gives us further proof 
of his many-sided.culture and catholicity of mind. His famous 
chapter on*the Roman law has been accepted by the most fas¬ 
tidious experts of an esoteric science as a masterpiece of knowl¬ 
edge, condensation, and lucidity. It has actually been received as 
a textbook in some of the continental universities, published sep¬ 
arately with notes and illustrations. When we consider the neg- 


92 


GIBBON. 


lect of Rom^n jurisprudence in England till quite recent times, 
and its severe study on the Continent, we shall better appreciate 
the mental grasp and vigour which enabled an unprofessional 
Englishman in the last century to produce such a dissertation. A 
little further on (chapter forty-seven) the history of the doctrine of 
the Incarnation, and the controversies that sprang up around it, 
are discussed with a subtlety worthy of a scientific theologian. It 
is perhaps the first attempt towards a philosophical history of 
dogma, less patient and minute than the works of the specialists of 
modern Germany on the same subject, but for spirit, clearness, and 
breadth it is superior to those profound but somewhat barbarcrtis 
writers. The flexibility of intellect which can do justice in quick 
succession to such diverse subjects is very extraordinary, and as¬ 
suredly implies great width of sympathy and large receptivity of 
nature. 

Having terminated the period of Justinian, Gibbon makes a 
halt, and surveys the varied and immense scene through which he 
will presently pass in many directions. He rapidly discovers ten 
main lines, along which he will advance in succession to his final 
goal, the conquest of Constantinople. The two pages at the com¬ 
mencement of the forty-eight, chapter, in which he sketches out the 
remainder of his plan and indicates the topics which he means to 
treat, are admirable as a luminous firtcis, and for the powerful 
grasp which they show of his immense subject. It lay spread out 
all before him, visible in every part to his penetrating eye, and he 
seems to rejoice in his conscious strength and ability to undertake 
the historical conquest on which he is about to set out. “ Nor will 
this scope of narrative,” he says, “ the riches and variety of these 
materials, be incompatible with the unity of design and composi¬ 
tion. As in his daily prayers the Mussulman of Fez or Delhi still 
turns his face towards the temple of Mecca, the historian’s eye will 
always be fixed on the city of Constantinople.” Then follows the 
catalogue of nations and empires whose fortunes he means to sing. 
A grander vision, a more majestic procession, never swept before 
the mind’s eye of poet or historian. 

And the practical execution is worthy of the initial inspiration. 
After a rapid and condensed narrative of Byzantine history till the 
end of the twelfth century, he takes up the'brilliant theme of Ma¬ 
homet and his successors. A few pages on the climate and 
physical features of Arabia fittingly introduce the subject. And it 
may be noted in passing that Gibbon’s attention to geography, and 
his skill and taste for geographical description, are remarkable 
among his many gifts. He was as diligent a student of maps and 
travels as of historical records, and seems to have had a rare faculty 
of realising in imagination scenes and countries of which he had 
only read. In three chapters, glowing with oriental colour and 
rapid as a charge of Arab horse, he tells the story of the prophet 
and the Saracen empire. Then the Bulgarians, Hungarians, and 
Russians appear on the scene, to be soon followed by the Nor¬ 
mans, and their short but brilliant dominion in Southern Italy. 


GIBBON. 


93 

But now the Seljukian Turks are emerging from the depths of 
Asia, taking the place of the degenerated Saracens, invading the 
Eastern empire and conquering Jerusalem. The two waves of 
hostile fanaticism soon meet in the Crusades. The piratical seizure 
of Constantinople by the Latins brings in view the French and 
Venetians, the family of Courtenay and its pleasant digression. 
Then comes the slow agony of the restored Greek empire. Threat¬ 
ened by the Moguls, it is invaded and dismembered by the Otto¬ 
man Turks. Constantinople seems ready to fall into their hands. 
But the timely diversion of Tamerlane produces a respite of half a 
century. Nothing can be more artistic than Gibbon’s management 
of his subject as he approaches its termination. He, who is such 
a master of swift narrative, at this point introduces artful pauses, 
suspensions of the final catastrophe, which heighten our interest in 
the fate which is hanging over the city of Constantine. In 1425 
the victorious Turks have conquered all the Greek empire save the 
capital. Amurath II. besieged it for two months, and was only 
prevented from taking it by a domestic revolt in Asia Minor. At 
the end of his sixty-fifth chapter Gibbon leaves Constantinople 
hanging on the brink of destruction, and paints in glowing colours 
the military virtues of its deadly enemies, the Ottomans. Then he 
interposes one of his most finished chapters, of miscellaneous con¬ 
tents, but terminating in the grand and impressive pages on the 
revival of learning in Italy. There we read of the “ curiosity and 
emulation of the Latins,’’ of the zeal of Petrarch and the success 
of Boccace in Greek studies, of Leontius, Pilatus, Bessarion, and 
Lascaris. A glow of sober enthusiasm warms the great scholar as 
he paints the early light of that happy dawn. He admits that the 
“arms of the Turks pressed the flight of the Muses” from Greece 
to Italy. But he “trembles at the thought that Greece might have 
been overwhelmed with her schools and libraries, before Europe 
had emerged from the deluge of barbarism, and that the seeds of 
science might have been scattered on the winds, before the Italian 
soil was prepared for their cultivation.” In one of the most per¬ 
fect sentences to be found in English prose he thus describes the 
Greek tongue: “In their lowest depths of servitude and de¬ 
pression, the subjects of the Byzantine throne were still possessed 
of a golden key that could unlock the treasures of antiquity, of a 
musical and prolific language that gives a soul to the objects of 
sense and a body to the abstractions of philosophy.” Meanwhile 
we are made to feel that the subjects of the Byzantine throne, with 
their musical speech, that Constantinople with her libraries and 
schools, will all soon fall a prey to the ravening and barbarous Turk. 
This brightening light of the Western sky contending with the 
baleful gloom which is settling down over the East, is one of the 
most happy contrasts in historical literature. Then comes the end, 
the preparations and skill of the savage invader, the futile but heroic 
defence, the overwhelming ruin which struck down the Cross and 
erected the Crescent over the city of Constantine the Great. 

It is one of tne many proofs of Gibbon’s artistic instinct tha: 



94 


GIBBON. 


he did not end with this great catastrophe. On the contrary, he 
adds three more chapters. His fine tact warned him that the 
tumult and thunder of the final ruin must not be the last sounds 
to strike the ear. A resolution of the discord was needed; a soft 
chorale should follow the din and lead to a mellow adagio close. 
And this he does with supreme skill. With ill-suppressed disgust, 
he turns from New to Old Rome. “Constantinople no longer 
appertains to the Roman historian—nor shall I enumerate the civil 
and religious edifices that were profaned or erected by its Turkish 
masters.” Amid the decayed temples and mutilated beauty of the 
Eternal City, he moves down to a melodious and pathetic conclusion 
—piously visits the remaining fragments of ancient splendour and 
art, deplores and describes the ravages wrought by time, and still 
more by man, and recurring once again to the scene of his first 
inspiration,, bids farewell to the Roman empire among the ruins of 
the Capitol. 

We have hitherto spoken in terms of warm, though perhaps 
not excessive eulogy of this great work. But praise would lack 
the force of moderation and equipoise, if allusion were not made 
to some of its defects. The pervading defect of all has been already 
referred to in a preceding chapter—an inadequate conception of 
society as an organism, living and growing, like other organisms, 
according to special laws of its own. In these brilliant volumes 
on the Middle Ages, the special problems which that period sug¬ 
gests are not stated, far less solved; they are not even suspected. 
1 he feudal polity, the Catholic Church, the theocratic supremacy 
of the Popes, considered as institutions which the historian is 
called upon to estimate and judge; the gradual dissolution of both 
feudalis mand Catholicism, brought about by the spread of industry 
in the temporal order and of science in the spiritual order, are not 
even referred to. Many more topics might be added to this list of 
weighty omissions. It would be needless to say that no blame 
attaches to Gibbon for neglecting views of history which had not 
emerged in his time, if there were not persons, who, forgetting the 
slow progress of knowledge, are apt to ascribe the defects of a 
book to incompetence in its author. If Gibbon’s conception of 
the Middle Ages seems to us inadequate now, it is because since 
his time our conceptions of society in that and in all periods have 
been much enlarged. We maybe quite certain that if Gibbon had 
had our experience, no one would have seen the imperfections of 
particular sides of his work as we now have it more clearly than he. 

Laying aside, therefore, reflexions of this kind as irrelevant and 
unjust, we may ask whether there are any other faults which may 
fairly be found with him. One must admit that there are. After 
all, they are not very important. 

■ (I /) Striking as is his account of Justinian’s reign, it has two 

blemishes. First, the offensive details about the vices of Theodora. 
Granting them to be well authenticated, which they are not, it was 
quite unworthy of the author and his subject to soil his pao-es with 
such a chromque scandaleuse. The defence which he sets up in his 


GIBBON. 


95 

Memoirs, that he is “justified in painting the manners of the times, 
and that the vices of Theodora form an essential feature in the 
reign and character of Justinian,” cannot be admitted. First, we 
are not sure that the vices existed, and were not the impure inven¬ 
tions of a malignant calumniator. Secondly, Gibbon is far from 
painting the manners of the time as a moralist or an historian ; he 
paints them with a zest for pruriency worthy of Bayle or Brantome. 

11 was an occasion for a wise scepticism to register grave doubts 
as to the infamous stories of Procopius. A rehabilitation of 
Theodora is not a theme calculated to provoke enthusiasm, and is 
impossible besides from the entire want of adequate evidence. But 
a thoughtful writer would not have lost his time, if he referred to 
the subject at all, in pointing out the moral improbability of the 
current accounts. He might have dwelt on the unsupported testi¬ 
mony of the only witness, the unscrupulous Procopius, whom 
Gibbon himself convicts on another subject of flagrant mendacity. 
But he would have been especially slow to believe that a woman 
who had led the life of incredible profligacy he has described, would, 
in consequence of “ some vision either of sleep or fancy,” in which 
future exaltation was promised to her, assume “ like a skilful act¬ 
ress, a more decent character, relieve her poverty by the laudable 
industry of spinning wool, and affect a life of chastity and solitude 
in a small house, which she afterwards changed into a magnificent 
temple.” Magdalens have been converted, no doubt, from immoral 
living, but not by considerations of astute prudence suggested by 
day-dreams of imperial greatness. Gibbon might have thought of 
the case of Madame de Maintenon, and how her reputation fared 
in the hands of the vindictive courtiers of Versailles; how a woman, 
cold as ice and pure as snow, was freely charged with the most 
abhorrent vices without an atom of foundation. But the truth prob¬ 
ably is that he never thought of the subject seriously at all, and 
that, yielding to a regrettable inclination, he copied his licentious 
Greek notes with little reluctance. 

( 2 .) The character of Belisarius, enigmatical enough in itself, 
is made by him more enigmatical still. He concludes the 
forty-first chapter, in which the great deeds of the conqueror 
of Italy and Africa, and the ingratitude with which Justinian 
rewarded his services, are set forth in strong contrast, with 
the inept remark that “ Belisarius appears to be either below 
or above the character of a MAN.” The grounds of the apparent 
meekness with which Belisarius supported his repeated disgraces 
cannot now be ascertained : but the motives of Justinian’s conduct 
are not so difficult to find. As Finlay points out in his thoughtful 
history of Greece, Belisarius must have been a pecula tor on a large 
and dangerous scale. “ Though he refused the Gothic throne and 
the empire of the West, he did not despise nor neglect wealth : he 
accumulated riches which could not have been acquired by any 
commander-in-chief amidst the wars and famines of the period, 
without rendering the military and civil administration subservient 
to his pecuniary profit. On his return from Italy h° lived at Con- 



GIBBON. 


96 

stantinople in almost regal splendour, and maintained a body of 
7,000 cavalry attached to his household. In an empire where 
confiscation was an ordinary financial resource, and under a 
sovereign whose situation rendered jealousy only common prudence, 
it is not surprising that the wealth of Belisarius excited the im¬ 
perial cupidity, and induced Justinian to seize great part of it” 
[Greece under the Romans, chap. 3). There is shrewd insight in 
this, and though we may regret that we cannot attain to more, it is 
better than leaving the subject with an unmeaning paradox. 

It may be said generally that Gibbon has not done justice to 
the services rendered to Europe by the Byzantine empire. In his 
crowded forty-eighth chapter, which is devoted to the subject, he 
passes over events and characters with such speed that his history 
in this part becomes little more than a chronicle, vivid indeed, but 
barren of thoughtful political views. His account of the Isaurian 
period may be instanced among others as an example of defective 
treatment. If we turn to the judicious Finlay, we see what an 
immense but generally unacknowledged debt Europe owes to the 
Greek empire. The saving of Christendom from Mohammedan 
conquest is too easily attributed to the genius of Charles Martel 
and his brave Franks. The victory at Tours was important no 
doubt, but almost a century previously the followers of the prophet 
had been checked byHeraclius; and their memorable repulse be¬ 
fore Constantinople under the Isaurian Leo was the real barrier 
opposed to their conquest of the West. It requires but little 
reflection to see that without this brave resistance to the Moslem 
invasion, the course of mediaeval history would have been com¬ 
pletely changed. Next in time, but hardly second in value to the 
services of the Greeks at Marathon and Salamis, must be reckoned 
the services of the Byzantine emperors in repelling the barbarians. 
Such an important consideration as this should hardly have escaped 
Gibbon. 

Gibbon’s account of Charlemagne is strangely inadequate. It 
is perhaps the only instance in his work where he has failed to 
appreciate a truly great man, and the failure is the more deplorable 
as it concerns one of the greatest men who have ever lived. He 
did not realise the greatness of the man, of his age, or of his work. 
Properly considered, the eighth century is the most important and 
memorable which Europe has ever seen. During its course the 
geographical limits, the ecclesiastical polity, and the feudal system 
within and under which our western group of nations was destined 
to live for five or six centuries, were provisionally settled and deter¬ 
mined. The wonderful house of the Carolings. which produced no 
less than five successive rulers of genius (of whom two had ex¬ 
traordinary genius, Charles Martel’ and Charlemagne, were the 
human instruments of this great work. The Frankish Monarchy 
was hastening to ruin when they saved it. Saxons in the East and 
Saracens in the South were on the point of extinguishing the few 
surviving embers of civili^Hon which still existed. The Bishop 
of Rome was ready to fa 1 a prey to the Lombards, and the pro 


G/BBOAT. 


97 

gressive papacy of Hildebrand and Innocent ran imminent risk of 
being extirpated at its root. Charles and his ancestors prevented 
these evils. Of course it is open to any one to say that there were 
no evils threatening, that Mohammedanism is as good as Chris¬ 
tianity, that the Papacy was a monstrous calamity, that to have 
allowed Eastern Germany to remain pagan and barbarous would 
have done no harm. The question cannot be discussed here. But 
every law of historic equity compels us to admit that whether the 
result was good or bad, the genius of men who could leave such 
lasting impressions on the world as the Carolings did, must have 
been exceptionally great. And this is what Gibbon has not seen; 
he has not seen that, whether their work was good or bad in the 
issue, it was colossal. His tone in reference to Charlemagne is 
unworthy to a degree. “ Without injustice to his fame, I may dis¬ 
cern some blemishes in the sanctity and greatness of the restorer 
of the Western Empire. Of his moral virtues, chastity was not the 
most conspicuous.” This from the pen of Gibbon seems hardly 
serious. Again : “ I touch with reverence the laws of Charlemagne, 
so highly applauded by a respectable judge. They compose not a 
system, but a series of occasional and minute edicts, for the cor¬ 
rection of abuses, the reformation of manners, the economy of his 
farms, the care of his poultry, and even the sale of his eggs.” And 
yet Gibbon had read the Capitularies. The struggle and care of 
the hero to master in some degree the wide welter of barbarism 
surging around him, he never recognised. It is a spot on Gibbon’s 
fame. 

Dean Milman considers that Gibbon’s account of the Crusades 
is the least accurate and satisfactory chapter in his history, and 
“ that he has here failed in that lucid arrangement which in gen¬ 
eral gives perspicuity to his most condensed and crowded narra¬ 
tives.” This blame seems to be fully merited, if restricted to the 
second of the two chapters which Gibbon has devoted to the 
Crusades. The fifty-eighth chapter, in which he treats of the First 
Crusade, leaves nothing to be desired. It is not one of his best 
chapters, though it is quite up to his usually high level. But the 
fifty-ninth chapter, it must be owned, is not only weak, but what is 
unexampled elsewhere in him, confused and badly written. It is 
not, as in the case of Charlemagne, a question of imperfect appre¬ 
ciation of a great man or epoch ; it is a matter of careless and 
slovenly presentation of a period which he had evidently mastered 
with his habitual thoroughness, but owing to the rapidity with 
which he composed his last volume, he did not do full justice to it. 
He says significantly in his Memoirs, that “ he wished that a pause, 
an interval, had been allowed for a serious revisal ” of the last 
three volumes, and there can be little doubt that this chapter was 
one of the sources of his regrets. It is in fact a mere tangle. The 
Second and the Third Crusades are so jumbled together, that it is 
only a reader who knows the subject very well who can find his 
way through the labyrinth. Gibbon seems at this point, a thing 
very unusual with him, to have become impatient with his subject, 

7 



GIBBON. 


98 

and to have wished to hurry over it. “ A brief parallel,” he says, 
“ may save the repetition of a tedious narrative.” The result of this 
expeditious method has been far from happy. It is the only occa¬ 
sion where Gibbon has failed in his usual high finish and admirable 
literary form. 

Gibbon’s style was at one period somewhat of a party question. 
Good Christians felt a scruple in discerning any merits in the style 
of a writer who had treated the martyrs of the early Church with so 
little ceremony and generosity. On the other hand, those whose 
opinions approached more or less to his, expatiated on the splendour 
and majesty of his diction. Archbishop Whately went Out of his 
way in a note to his Logic to make a keen thrust at an author 
whom it was well to depreciate whenever occasion served. “ His 
way of writing,” he says, “ reminds one of those persons who never 
dare look you full in the face.” Such criticisms are out of date 
now. The faults of Gibbon’s style are obvious enough, and its 
compensatory merits are not far to seek. No one can overlook its 
frequent tumidity and constant want of terseness. It lacks supple¬ 
ness, ease, variety. It is not often distinguished by happy se¬ 
lection of epithet, and seems to ignore all delicacy of nuance. A 
prevailing grandiloquence, which easily slides into pomposity, is its 
greatest blemish. The acute Porson saw this and expressed it ad¬ 
mirably. In the preface to his letters to Archdeacon Travis, 
he says of Gibbon, “Though his style is in general correct and 
elegant, he sometimes ‘draws out the thread of his verbosity finer 
than the staple of his argument’ In endeavoring to avoid vulgar 
terms he too frequently dignifies trifles, and clothes common 
thoughts in a splendid dress that would be rich enough for 
the noblest ideas. In short we are too often reminded of that 
great man, Mr. Prig, the auctioneer, whose manner was so 
inimitably fine that he had as much to say on a ribbon as on a 
Raphael.” It seems as if Gibbon had taken the stilted tone of the 
old French tragedy for his model, rather than the crisp and 
nervous prose of the best French writers. We are constantly 
offended by a superfine diction lavished on barbarous chiefs 
and rough soldiers of the Lower Empire, which almost reproduces 
the high flown rhetoric in which Corneille’s and Racine’s characters 
address each other. Such phrases as the “majesty of the throne,” 
“the dignity of the purple,” the “wisdom of the senate,” recur with 
a rather jarring monotony, especially when the rest of the narrative 
is designed to show that there was no majesty nor dignity nor wis¬ 
dom involved in the matter. We feel that the writer was thinking 
more of his sonorous sentence than of the real fact. On the other 
hand, nothing but a want of candour or taste can lead any one 
to overlook the rare and great excellences of Gibbon’s style. 
First of all, it is singularly correct: a rather common merit now, 
but not common in his day. But its sustained vigour and loftiness 
will always be uncommon ; above all its rapidity and masculine 
length of stride are quite admirable. When he takes up his pen to 
describe a campaign, or any great historic scene, we feel that we 



GIBB'-’K. 


99 

shall have something worthy of the occasion, that we shall be car¬ 
ried swiftly and grandly through it all, without the suspicion of a 
breakdown of any kind being possible. An indefinable stamp of 
weightiness is impressed on Gibbon’s writing; he has a baritone 
manliness which banishes everthing small, trivial, or weak. When 
he is eloquent (and it should be remembered to his credit that he 
never affects eloquence, though he occasionally affects dignity), 
he rises without effort into real grandeur. On the whole we may 
say that his manner, with certain manifest faults, is not unworthy 
of his matter, and the praise is great. 

It is not quite easy to give expression to another feeling which 
is often excited in reading Gibbon. It is somewhat of this kind, 
that it is more fitted to inspire admiration than love or sympathy. 
Its merits are so great, the mass of information it contains is so 
stupendous, that all competent judges of such work feel bound to 
praise it. Whether they like it in the same degree, may be ques¬ 
tioned. Among reading men and educated persons it is not com¬ 
mon—such is my experience—to meet with people who know their 
Gibbon well. Superior women do not seem to take to him kindly, 
even when there is no impediment on religious grounds. Madame 
du Deffand, writing to Walpole, says, “ I whisper it to you, but I 
am not pleased with Mr. Gibbon’s work. It is declamatory, 
oratorical ... I lay it aside without regret, and it requires an 
effort to take it up again.” Another of Walpole’s correspondents, 
the Countess of Ossory, seems to have made similar strictures. 
If we admit that women are less capable than masculine scholars 
of doing justice to the strong side of Gibbon, we may also acknowl¬ 
edge that they are better fitted than men to appreciate and to be 
shocked by his defective side, which is a prevailing want of moral 
elevation and nobility of sentiment. His cheek rarely flushes in 
enthusiasm for a good cause. The tragedy of human life never 
seems to touch him, no glimpse of the infinite ever calms and raises 
the reader of his pages. Like nearly all the men of his day, 
he was of the earth earthy, and it is impossible to get over the 
fact 


IOO 


GIBBON, 


CHAPTER X. 

LAST ILLNESS.—DEATH.—CONCLUSION. 

Gibbon had now only about six months to live. He did 
not seem to have suffered by his rapid journey from Lausanne to 
London. During the summer which he spent with his friend Lord 
Sheffield, he was much as usual; only his friend noticed that his 
habitual dislike to motion appeared to increase, and he was so in¬ 
capable of exercise that he was confined to the library and dining¬ 
room. “Then he joined Mr. F. North in pleasant arguments 
against exercise in general. He ridiculed the unsettled and rest¬ 
less disposition that summer, the most uncomfortable of all seasons, 
as he said, generally gives to those who have the use of their 
limbs.” The true disciples of Epicurus are not always the least 
stout and stoical in the presence of irreparable evils. 

After spending three or four months at Sheffield Place, he 
went to Bath to visit his stepmother, Mrs. Gibbon. His conduct 
to her through life was highly honourable to him. It should be re¬ 
membered that her jointure, paid out of his father’s decayed 
estate, was a great tax on his small income. In his efforts to im¬ 
prove his position by selling his landed property, Mrs. Gibbon 
seems to have been at times -somewhat difficult to satisfy as regards 
the security of her interests. It was only prudent on her part. 
But it is easy to see what a source of alienation and quarrel 
was here ready prepared, if both parties had not risen superior to 
sordid motives. There never seems to have been the smallest 
cloud between them. When one of his properties was sold he 
writes : “Mrs. Gibbon’s jointure is secured on the Buriton estate, 
and her legal consent is requisite for the sale. Again and again I 
must repeat my hope' that she is perfectly satisfied, and that the 
close of her life may not be embittered by suspicion, fear, or 
discontent. What new security does she prefer—the funds, a 
mortgage, or your land ? At all events, she must be made easy.” 
So Gibbon left town and lay at Reading on his road to Bath: here 
he passed about ten days with his stepmother, who was now nearly 
eighty years of age. “In mind and conversation she is just the same 
as twenty years ago,” he writes to Lord Sheffield ; “ she has spirits, 
appetite, legs, and eyes, and talks of living till ninety. I can say 
from my heart, Amen.” And in another letter, a few days later, he 



GIBBON: 


ior 


says: “A tete-a-tete of eight or nine hours every day is rather 
difficult to support; yet I do assure you that our conversation 
flows with more ease and spirit when we are alone, than when any 
auxiliaries are summoned to our aid. She is indeed a wonderful 
woman, and I think all her faculties of the mind stronger and more 
active than I have ever known them.1 shall therefore de¬ 

part next Friday, but I may possibly reckon without my host, as I 
have not yet apprised Mrs. G. of the term of my visit, and will cer¬ 
tainly not quarrel with her for a short delay.” He then went 
to Althorpe, and it is the last evidence of his touching a book— 
“exhausted the morning (of the 5th November) among the first 
editions of Cicero.” Then he came to London, and in a few days 
was seized with the illness which in a little more than two months 
put an end to his life. 

His malady was dropsy, complicated with other disorders. He 
had most strangely neglected a very dangerous symptom for up¬ 
wards of thirty years, not only having failed to take medical advice 
about it, but even avoiding all allusion to it to bosom friends like 
Lord Sheffield. But longer concealment was now impossible. He 
sent for the eminent surgeon Farquhar (the same who afterwards 
attended William Pitt), and he, together with Cline, at once recog¬ 
nised the case as one of the utmost gravity, though they did not 
say as much to the patient. On Thursday, the 14th of November, 
he" was tapped and greatly relieved. He said he was not appalled 
by the operation, and during its progress he did not lay aside his 
usual good-humoured pleasantry. He was soon out again, but only 
for a few days, and a fortnight after another tapping was necessary. 
Again he went out to dinners and parties, which must have been 
most imprudent at his age and in his state. But he does not seem 
to have acted contrary to medical advice. He was very anxious to 
meet the prime minister, William Pitt, with whom he was not ac¬ 
quainted, though he must have seen him in old days in the House. 
He saw him twice; once at Eden Farm for a whole day, and was 
much gratified, we are told. At last he got to what he called his 
home—the house of his true and devoted friend. Lord Sheffield. 
“ But,” says the latter, whose narrative of his friend’s last illness 
is marked by a deep and reserved tenderness that does him much 
honour, “ this last visit to Sheffield Place became far different from 
any he had ever made before. That ready, cheerful, various and 
illuminating conversation which we had before admired in him, was 
not always to be found in the library or the drawing-room. He 
moved with difficulty, and retired from company sooner than he 
had been used to do. On the 23rd of December his appetite began 
to fail him. He observed to me that it was a very bad sign with 
him when he could not eat his breakfast, which he had done at all 
times very heartily; and this seems to have been the strongest 
expression of apprehension that he was ever observed to utter.” 
He soon became too ill to remain beyond the reach of the highest 
medical advice. On the 7th of January, 1794, he left a houseful of 
company and friends for his lodgings in St. James’s Street. On 



102 


GIBBON. 


arriving he sent the following note to Lord Sheffield, the last lines 
he ever wrote:— 


“St. James’s, Four o’clock, Tuesday. 

“ This date says everything. I was almost killed between 
Sheffield Place and East Grinstead by hard, frozen, long, and cross 
ruts, that would disgrace the approach of an Indian wigwam. The 
rest was somewhat less painful, and I reached this place half dead, 
but not seriously feverish or ill. I found a dinner invitation from 
Lord Lucan; but what are dinners to me ? I wish they did not 
know of my departure. I catch the flying post. What an effort 1 
Adieu till Thursday or Friday.” 

The end was not far off. On the 13th of January he underwent 
another operation, and, as usual, experienced much relief. “ His 
spirits continued good. He talked of passing his time at houses 
which he had often frequented with great pleasure—the Duke of 
Devonshire’s, Mr. Craufurd’s, Lord Spencer’s, Lord Lucan’s, Sir 
Ralph Payne’s, Mr. Batt’s.” On the 14th of January “ he saw 
some company—Lady Lucan and Lady Spencer—and thought him¬ 
self well enough to omit the opium draught which he had been 
used to take for some time. He slept very indifferently; before 
nine the next morning he rose, but could not eat his breakfast. 
However, he appeared tolerably well, yet complained at times of a 
pain in his stomach. At one o’clock he received a visit of an hour 
from Madame de Sylva; and at three, his friend, Mr. Craufurd, of 
Auchinames (whom he always mentioned with particular regard), 
called, and stayed with him till past five o’clock. They talked, as 
usual, on various subjects; and twenty hours before his death Mr. 
Gibbon happened to fall into a conversation not uncommon with 
him, on the probable duration of his life. He said that he thought 
himself a good life for ten, twelve, or perhaps twenty years. About 
six he ate the wing of a chicken and drank three glasses of Ma¬ 
deira. After dinner he became very uneasy and impatient, com¬ 
plained a good deal, and appeared so weak that his servant was 
alarmed. 

“ During the evening he complained much of his stomach, and 
of a feeling of nausea. Soon after nine, he took his opium draught 
and went to bed. About ten he complained of much pain, and 
desired that warm napkins might be applied to his stomach. He 
almost incessantly expressed a sense of pain till about four o’clock 
in the morning, when he said he found his stomach much easier. 
About seven the servant asked whether he should send for Mr. 
Farquhar. He answered, No ; that he was as well as the day 
before. At about half-past eight he got out of bed, and said he 
was ‘plus adroit’ than he had been for three months past, and got 
into bed again without assistance, better than usual. About nine 
he said he would rise. The servant, however, persuaded him to 
remain in bed till Mr. Farquhar, who was expected at eleven, 


GIBBON. 


103 

should come. Till about that hour he spoke with great facility. 
Mr. 1' arquhar came at the time appointed, and he was then visibly 
dying. When the valet-de-chambre returned, after attending Mr. 
Farquhar out of the room, Mr. Gibbon said, ‘ Pourquoi est ce que 
vous me quittez ? ’ This was about half-past eleven. At twelve 
he drank some brandy and water from a teapot, and desired his 
favourite servant to stay with him. These were the last words he 
pronounced articulately. To the last he preserved his senses: 
and when he could no longer speak, his servant having asked a 
question, he made a sign to show that he understood him. He 
was quite tranquil, and did not stir, his eyes half shut. About a 
quarter before one he ceased to breathe.” He wanted just eighty- 
three days of fifty-seven years of age. 

Thus, in consequence of his own strange self-neglect and im¬ 
prudence, was extinguished one of the most richly-stored minds 
that ever lived. Occurring when it did, so near the last summons, 
Gibbon’s prospective hope of continued life “ for ten, twelve, or 
twenty years ” is harshly pathetic, and full of that irony which 
mocks the vain cares of men. But, truly, his forecast was not 
irrational if he had not neglected ordinary precautions. In spite 
of his ailments he felt full, and was full, of life, when he was cut 
off. We cannot be sure if lengthened days would have added 
much to his work already achieved. There is hardly a parallel 
case in literature of the great powers of a whole life being so con¬ 
centrated on one supreme and magnificent effort. Yet, if he had 
lived to 1804, or as an extreme limit, to 1814, we should have been 
all gainers. In the first place, he certainly would have finished his 
admirable autobiography. We cannot imagine what he would have 
made of it, judging from the fragment which exists. And yet that 
fragment is almost a masterpiece. But his fertile mind had other 
schemes in prospect; and what such a diligent worker would have 
done with a decade or two more of years it is impossible to say, 
except that it is certain they would not have been wasted. The 
extinction of a real mind is ever an irreparable loss. 

As it was, he went to his rest after one of the greatest victories 
ever achieved in his own field of humane letters, and lived long 
enough to taste the fruits of his toil. He was never puffed up, 
but soberly and without arrogance received his laurels. His un¬ 
selfish zeal and haste to console his bereaved friend showed him 
him warm and loving to the last; and we may say that his last 
serious effort was consecrated to the genius of pious friendship. 

In 1796, two years after Gibbon’s death, Lord Sheffield published 
two quarto volumes of the historian’s miscellaneous works. They 
have been republished in one thick octavo, and many persons sup¬ 
pose that it contains the whole of the posthumous works; not un¬ 
naturally, as a fraudulent statement on the title-page, “ complete in 
one volume,” is well calculated to produce that impression. But 
in 1814 Lord Sheffield issued a second edition in five volumes oc¬ 
tavo, containing much additional matter, which additional matter 
was again published in a quarto form, no doubt for the convenience 
of the purchasers of the original quarto edition. 


GIBBON. 


104 

Of the posthumous works, the Memoirs are by far the most in> 
portant portion. Unfortunately, they were left in a most unfinished 
state, and what we now read is nothing else than a mosaic put to¬ 
gether by- Lord Sheffield from six different sketches. Next to the 
Memoirs are the journals and diaries of his studies. As a picture 
of Gibbon’s method, zeal, and thoroughness in the pursuit of 
knowledge, they are of the highest interest. But they refer to an 
early period of his studies, long previous to the concentration of 
his mind on his great work, and one would like to know whether 
they present the best selection that might have been made from 
these records. It is interesting to follow Gibbon in his perusal of 
Homer and Juvenal at five-and-twenty. But one would much like 
to be admttted to his study when he was a far riper scholar, and 
preparing for or writing the Decline and Fall. Lord Sheffield pos¬ 
itively prohibited by a clause in his will, any further publication of 
the Gibbon papers, and although Dean Milman was permitted to 
see them, it was with the express understanding that none of their 
contents should be divulged. After the Memoirs and the journals, 
the most interesting portion of the miscellaneous works are The 
Antiquities of the House of Brunswick, which in their present 
form are merely the preparatory sketch of a large work. It is too 
imperfect to allow us to judge of what Gibbon even designed to 
make of it. But it contains some masterly pages, and the style in 
many places seems more nervous and supple than that of the 
Decline and Fall. 

For instance, this account of Albert Azo the Second :— 

“ Like one of his Tuscan ancestors Azo the Second was distinguished 
among the princes of Italy by the epithet of the Rich. The particulars of 
his rentroll cannot now be ascertained. An occasional though authentic 
deed of investiture enumerates eighty-three fiefs or manors which he held 
of the empire in Lombardy and Tuscany, from the Marquisate of Este to 
the county of Luni; but to these possessions must be added the lands 
which he enjoyed as the vassal of the Church, the ancient patrimony of 
Otbert (the terra Obertenga) in the counties of Arezzo, Pisa, and Lucca, 
and the marriage portion of his first wife, which, according to the various 
readings of the manuscripts, may be computed either at twenty or two 
hundred thousand English acres. If such a mass of landed property were 
now accumulated on the head of an Italian nobleman, the annual revenue 
might satisfy the largest demands of private luxury or avarice, and the for¬ 
tunate owner would be rich in the improvement of agriculture, the manu¬ 
factures of industry, the refinement of taste, and the extent of commerce. 
But the barbarism of the eleventh century diminished the income and ag¬ 
gravated the expense of the Marquis of Este. In a long series of war and 
anarchy, man and the works of man had been swept away, and the intro¬ 
duction of each ferocious and idle stranger had been overbalanced by the 
loss of five or six perhaps of the peaceful industrious natives. The mis¬ 
chievous growth of vegetation, the frequent inundations of the rivers were 
no longer checked by the vigilance of labor; the face of the country was 
again covered with forests and morasses; of the vast domains which ac¬ 
knowledged Azo for their lord, the far greater part was abandoned to the 
beasts of the field, and a much smaller portion was reduced to a state of 
constant and productive husbandry. An adequate rent may be obtained 


GIB BOX. 


T °5 

from the skill and substance of a free tenant who fertilizes a grateful soil, 
and enjoys the security and benefit of a long lease. But faint is the hope 
and scanty is the produce of these harvests which are raised by the reluc¬ 
tant toil of peasants and slaves condemned to a bare subsistence and care¬ 
less of the interests of a rapacious master. If his granaries are full, his 
purse is empty, and the want of cities or commerce, the difficulty of find¬ 
ing or reaching a market, obliges him to consume on the spot a part of 
his useless stock, which cannot be exchanged for merchandise or money. 

. . . The entertainment of his vassals and soldiers, their pay and rewards, 
their arms and horses, surpassed the measure of the most oppressive 
tribute, and the destruction which he inflicted on his neighbours was often 
retaliated on his own iands. The costly elegance of palaces and gardens was 
superseded by the laborious and expensive construction of strong castles on 
the summits of the most inaccessible rocks, and some of these, like the 
fortress of Canossa in the Apennine, were built and provided to sustain a 
three years’ siege against a royal army. But his defence in this world was 
less burdensome to a wealthy lord than his salvation in the next: the de¬ 
mands of his chapel, his priests, his alms, his offerings, his pilgrimages 
were incessantly renewed; the monastery chosen for his sepulchre was 
endowed with his fairest possessions, and the naked heir might often com¬ 
plain that his father’s sins had been redeemed at too high a price. The 
Marquis Azo was not exempt from the contagion of the times; his devo¬ 
tion was animated and inflamed by the frequent miracles that were per¬ 
formed in his presence ; and the monks of Vangadizza, who yielded to his 
request the arm of a dead saint, were not ignorant of the value of that 
inestimable jewel. After satisfying the demands of war and superstition 
he might approprfate the rest of his revenue to use and pleasure- But the 
Italians of the eleventh century were imperfectly skilled in the liberal and 
mechanical arts; the objects of foreign luxury were furnished at an exor¬ 
bitant price by the merchants of Pisa and Venice; and the superfluous 
wealth which could not purchase the real comforts of life, were idly wasted 
on some rare occasions of vanity and pomp. Such were the nuptials of 
Boniface, Duke or Marquis of Tuscany, whose family was long after 
united with that of Azo by the marriage of their children. These nuptials 
were celebrated on the banks of the Mincius which the fancy of Virgil has 
decorated with a more beautiful picture- The princes and people of Italy 
were invited to the feasts, which continued three months: the fertile 
meadows, which are intersected by the slow and winding course of the 
river, were covered with innumerable tents, and the bridegroom displayed 
and diversified the scenes of his proud and tasteless magnificence. All the 
utensils of the service were of silver, and his horses were shod with plates 
of the same metal, loosely nailed and carelessly dropped, to indicate his con¬ 
tempt of riches. An image of plenty and profusion was expressed in the 
banquet; the most delicious wines were drawn in buckets from the well; and 
the spices of the East were ground in water-mills like common flour. The 
dramatic and musical arts were in the rudest state ; but the Marquis had 
summoned the most popular singers, harpers, aud buffoons to exercise their 
talents in this splendid theatre. After this festival I might remark a 
singular gift of this same Boniface to the Emperor Henry III., a chariot 
and oxen of solid silver, which were designed only as a vehicle for a hogs¬ 
head of vinegar. If such an example should seem above the imitation of 
Azo himself, the Marquis of Este was at least superior in wealth and dig¬ 
nity to the vassals of his compeer. One of these vassals, the Viscount of 
Mantua, presented the German monarch with one hundred falcons and 
one hundred bav horses, a grateful contribution to the pleasures of a royal 
sportsman. In’that age the proud distinction between the nobles and 



io6 


GIBBON. 


princes of Italy was guarded with jealous ceremony. The Viscount of 
Mantua had never been seated at the table of Ins immediate lord; he 
yielded the invitation of the Emperor ; and a stag’s skin filled with pieces 
of gold was graciously accepted by the Marquis of Tuscany as the fine of 

his presumption. , , , , e 

“ The temporal felicity of Azo was crowned by the long possession of 
honour and riches ; he died in the year 1097, aged upwards of an hun¬ 
dred years; and the term of his mortal existence was almost commensu¬ 
rate with the lapse of the eleventh century. The character as well as the 
situation of the Marquis of Este rendered him an actor in the revolutions 
of that memorable period ; but time has cast a veil over the virtues and 
vices of the man, and I must be content to mark some of the eras, the 
milestones of his which measure the extent and intervals of the vacant 
wav. Albert Azo the Second was no more than seventeen when he first 
drew the sword of rebellion and patriotism, when he was involved with 
his grandfather, his father, and his three uncles in a common proscrip¬ 
tion. In the vigour of his manhood, about his fiftieth year, the Liguiian 
Marquis governed the cities of Milan and Genoa as the minister of Impe¬ 
rial authority. He was upwards of seventy when he passed the Alps to 
vindicate the inheritance of Maine for the children of his second mar¬ 
riage. lie became the friend and servant of Gregory VII., and in one of 
his epistles that ambitious pontiff recommends the Marquis Azo, as the 
most faithful and best beloved of the Italian princes, as the proper chan¬ 
nel through which a king of Hungary might convey his petitions to the 
apostolic throne. In the mighty contest between the crown and the mitre, 
the Marquis Azo and the Countess Matilda led the powers of Italy. And 
when the standard of .St. Peter was displayed, neither the age of the one 
nor the sex of the other could detain them from the field. With these 
two affectionate clients the Pope maintained his station in the fortress of 
Canossa, while the Emperor, barefoot on the frozen ground, fasted and 
prayed three days at the foot of the rock; they were witnesses to the 
abject ceremony of the penance and pardon of Plenry IV.; and in the 
triumph of the Church a patriot might foresee the deliverance of Italy 
from the German yoke. At the time of the event the Marquis of Este 
was above fourscore; but in the twenty following years he was still alive 
and active amidst the revolutions of peace and war. The last act which 
he subscribed is dated above a century after his birth; and in that the 
venerable chief possesses the command of his faculties, his family, and 
his fortune. In this rare prerogative the longevity of Albert Azo the 
Second stands alone. Nor can I remember in the authentic annals of 
mortality a single example of a king or prince, of a statesman or general, 
of a philosopher or poet, whose life has been extended beyond the period 
of a hundred years. . . . Three approximations which will not hastily be 
matched have distinguished the present century, Aurungzebe, Cardinal 
Fleury, and Fontenelle. Had a fortnight more been given to the phil¬ 
osopher, he might have celebrated his secular festival; but the lives and 
labours of the Mogul king and the French minister were terminated be¬ 
fore they had accomplished their ninetieth year.” 

Then follow several striking and graceful pages on Lucrezia 
Borgia and Rende of France, Duchess of Ferrara." The following 
description of the University of Padua and the literary tastes ox 
the house of Est* is all that we can give here :— 

“An university had been founded at Padua by the house of Este, and 
the scholastic rust was polished away by the revival of the literature of 



GIBBON. 


107 

Greece and Rome. The studies of Ferrara were directed by skilful and 
eloquent professors, either natives or foreigners. The ducal library was 
filled with a valuable collection of manuscripts and printed books, and as 
soon as twelve new plays of Plautus had been found in Germany, the 
Marquis Lionel of Este was impatient to obtain a fair and faithful copy 
of that ancient poet. Nor were these elegant pleasures confined to the 
learned world. Under the reign of Hercules I. a wooden theatre at a 
moderate cost of a thousand crowns was constructed in the largest court 
of the palace, the scenery represented some houses, a seaport and a ship, 
and the Menechmi of Plautus, which had been translated into Italian by 
the Duke himself, was acted before a numerous and polite audience. In 
the same language and with the same success the Amphytrion of Plautus 
and the Eunuchus of Terence were successively exhibited. And these 
classic models, which formed the taste of the spectators, excited the emu¬ 
lation of the poets of the age. For the use of the court and theatre of 
Ferrara, Ariosto composed his comedies, which were often played with 
applause, which are still read with pleasure. And such was the enthusi¬ 
asm of the new arts that one of the sons of Alphonso the First did not 
disdain to speak a prologue on the stage. I11 the legitimate forms of 
dramatic composition the Italians have not excelled; but it was in the 
court of Ferrara that they invented and refined the pastoral comedy, a 
romantic Arcadia which violates the truth of manners and the simplicity 
of nature, but which commands our indulgence by the elaborate luxury of 
eloquence and wit. The Aminta of Tasso was written for the amuse¬ 
ment and acted in the presence of Alphonso the Second, and his sister 
Leonora might apply to herself the language of a passion which disor¬ 
dered the reason without clouding the genius of her poetical lover. Of 
the numerous imitations, the Pastor Fido of Guarini, which alone can vie 
with the fame and merit of the original, is the work of the Duke’s secre¬ 
tary of state. It was exhibited in a private house in Ferrara.The 

father of the Tuscan muses, the sublime but unequal Dante, had pro¬ 
nounced that Ferrara was never honoured with the name of a poet; he 
would have been astonished to behold the chorus of bards, of melodious 
swans (their own allusion), which now peopled the banks of the Po. In 
the court of Duke Borso and his successor, Boyardo Count Scandiano, 
was respected as a noble, a soldier, and a scholar: his vigorous fancy 
first celebrated the loves and exploits of the paladin Orlando; and his 
fame has been preserved and eclipsed by the brighter glories and con¬ 
tinuation of his work. Ferrara may boast that on classic ground Ariosto 
and Tasso lived and sung; that the lines of the Orlando Furioso, the 
Gierusalemme Liberata were inscribed in everlasting characters under the 
eye of the First and Second Alphonso. In a period of near three thou¬ 
sand years, five great epic poets have arisen in the world, and it is a sin¬ 
gular prerogative that two of the five should be claimed as their own by a 
short age and a petty state.” 

It perhaps will be admitted that if the style of these passages 
is less elaborate than that of the Decline and Fall , the deficiency, 
if it is one, is compensated by greater ease and lightness of touch. 

It may be interesting to give a specimen of Gibbon’s French 
style. His command of that language was not inferior to his com¬ 
mand of his native idiom. One might even be inclined to say that 
his French prose is controlled by a purer taste than his English 
prose. The following excerpt, describing the Battle of Morgarten, 
will enable the reader to judge. It is taken from his early unfin- 



io8 


GIBBON. 


ished work on the History of the Swiss Republic, to which refer¬ 
ence has already been made (p. 59) :— 

“ Leopold etait parti de Zug vers le milieu de la nuit. II se flattait 
d’occuper sans resistance le defile de Morgarten qui ne perfait qu’avec 
difficult^ entre le lac Aegre et le pied d’une montagne escarpee. II march- 
ait a la tete de sa gendarmerie. Une colonne profond d’infanterie le 
suivait de pres, et les uns et les autres se promettaient une victoire facile 
si les paysans osaient se presenter & leur rencontre. Ils etaient a peine 
entres dans un chemin rude et etroit, et qui ne permettait qu’& trois ou 
quatre de marcher de front, qu’ils se sentirent accables d’une grele de 
pierres et de traits. Rodolphe de Reding, landamman de Schwitz et 
general des Confederes, n’avait oublie aucun des avantages que lui offrit 
la situation des lieux. II avait fait couper des roches enormes, qui en 
s’ebranlant des qu’on retirait les faibles appuis qui les retenaient encore, 
se detachaient du sommet de la montaigne et se precipitaient avec un 
bruit affreux sur les bataillons serres des Autrichiens. Deja les chevaux 
s’effrayaient, les rangs se confondaient, et le desordre egarait le courage 
et le rendait inutile, lorsque les Suisses descendirent de la montagne en 
poussant de grands cris. Accoutumes a poursuivre le chamois sur les 
bords glissants des precipices, ils couraient d’un pas assure au milieu des 
neiges. Ils etaient armes de grosses et pesantes hallebardes, auxquelles 
le fer le mieux trempe ne resistait point. I.es soldats de Leopold chance- 
lants et decourages cederent bientot aux efforts desesperes d’une troupe 
qui combattait pour tout ce qu’il y a de plus cher aux hommes. L’Abbe 
d’Einsidlen, premier auteur de cette guerre malheureuse, et le comte 
Henri de Montfort, donnerent les premiers l’example de la fuite. Le 
desordre devint general, le carnage fut affreux, et les Suisses se livraient 
au plaisir de la vengeance. A neuf heures du matin la bataille etait 

gagnee.Un grand nombre d’Autrichiens se precipitant les uns sur 

les autres, chercherent vainement dans le lac un asyle contre la fureur de 
leurs ennemis. Ils y perirent presque tous. Quinze cents hommes res- 
terent sur le champ de bataille. Ils etaient pour la plupart de la gend¬ 
armerie, qu’une valeur malheureuse et une armure pesante arretaient dans 
un lieu oil l’un et l’autre etaient inutiles. Longtemps apres Ton s’aper- 
cevait dans toutes les provinces voisines que l’elite de la noblesse avait 
peri dans cette fatale journee. L’infanterie beaucoup moins engagee 
dans le defile, vit en tremblant la defaite des chevaliers qui passaient pour 
invincibles, et dont les eseadrons effrayes se renversaient sur elle. Elle 
s’arreta, voulut se retirer, et dans 1’instant cette retraite devint une fuite 
honteuse. Sa perte fut assez peu considerable, mais les historiens de la 
nation ont conserve la memoire de cinquante braves Zuriquois dont on 
trouva les rangs couches morts sur la place. Leopold lui-meme fut en- 
traind par la foule qui le portait du cote de Zug. On le vit entrer dans 
sa ville de Winterthur. I,a frayeur, la honte et 1 ’indignation etaient en¬ 
core peintes sur son front. Des que la victoire se fut declarde en faveur 
des Suisses, ils s’assemblerent sur le champ de bataille, s’embrassdrent 
en versant des larmes d’allegresse, et remercierent Dieu de la grace qu’il 
venait de leur faire, et qui ne leur avait coute que quatorze de leurs 
compagnons.” 

His familiar letters and a number of essays, chiefly written in 
youth, form the remainder of the miscellaneous works. Of the 
letters, some have been quoted in this volume, and the reader can 
form his own judgment of them. Of the small essays we may say 



GIBBON. 


109 


that they augment, if it is possible, one’s notion of Gibbon’s labo¬ 
rious diligence and thoroughness in the field of historic research, 
and confirm his title to the character of an intrepid student. 

The lives of scholars are proverbially dull, and that of Gibbon 
is hardly an exception to the rule. In the case of historians, the 
protracted silent labour of preparation, followed by the conscien¬ 
tious exposition of knowledge acquired, into which the intrusion 
of the writer’s personality rarely appears to advantage, combine to 
give prominence to the work achieved, and to throw into the back¬ 
ground the author who achieves it. If indeed the historian, for¬ 
saking his high function and austere reserve, succumbs to the 
temptations that beset his path, and turns history into political 
pamphlet, poetic rhapsody, moral epigram, or garish melodrama, 
he may become conspicuous to a fault at the expense of his work, 
Gibbon avoided these seductions. If the Decline and Fall has no 
superior in historical literature, it is not solely in consequence of 
Gibbon’s profound learning, wide survey, and masterly grasp of 
his subject. With wise discretion, he subordinated himself to his 
task. The life of Gibbon is the less interesting, but his work 
remains monumental and supreme. 




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By JULES VERNE. 

*800 Leagne< on the Amazon.10 

♦ Tke Cryptogram .10 

• By GEORGE WALKER. 

♦The Three Spaniards.20 

By W. M. WILLIAMS. 

Science in Short Chapters.20 

By Mrs. HENRY WOOD. 

♦East Lynne. 20 

MISCELLANEOUS. 

Paul and Virginia.10 

Margaret and her Bridesmaids.20 

The Queen of the County.20 

Baron Munchnusea.10 














































































HEALTH AMD VIGOR 


FOR THE BRAIN AND NERVES. 



CROSBY’S VITALIZED FHOS-PHITES. 

This is a standard preparation with all physicians who treat 
nervous and mental disorders. 

Crosby's Vitalized Phosphites should be taken as a Special 
Brain Pood. 

To build up worn-out nerves, to banish sleeplessness, neu¬ 
ralgia and sick headache.— Dr. Gwynn. 

To promote good digestion.— Dr. Filmore. 

To “ stamp out ” consumption.— Dr. Churchill. 

To “ completly cure night sweats.”— John B. Quigley. 

To maintain the capabilities of the brain and nerves to per¬ 
form all functions even at the highest tension.— E. L. Kellogg. 

To restore the energy lost by nervousness, debility, over¬ 
exertion or enervated vital powers.— Dr. W. S. Wells. 

To repair the nerves that have been enfeebled by worry, de¬ 
pression, anxiety or der^p grief.— Miss Mary Bankin. 

To strengthen thL intellect so that study and deep mental 
application may be a pit*:" ire and not a trial.— B. M. Couch. 

To develop good tee* %1 glossy hair, dear skin, handsome nails 
in the young, so that they .ay be an inheritance in later years.— 
Editor School Journal. 

To enlarge the capabilities for enjoyment.— National Journal 
of Education. 

To “make life a pleasure,” “not a daily suffering.” “I 
really urge you to put it to the test.”— Miss Emily Faithfull. 

To amplify bodily and mental power to the present genera¬ 
tion and “prove the survival of the fittest ” to the next.— Bismarck. 

There is no other Vital Phos-phite, none that is extracted 
from living animal and vegetable tissues.— Dr. Casper. 

To restore lost powers aud abilities. — Dr. Bull. 

For sale by druggists or mail, $1, 

F. CROSBY CO., No. 5G West Twenty-fifth St., New York. 



LOVELL’S LIBRARY—CATALOGUE. 


185. Mysterious Island, Pt 11 .15 
Mysterious Island,PtI II. 15 

186. Tom Brown at Oxford, 

2 Parts, each.15 

187. Thicker than Water....20 

188. In Silk Attire.20 

189. Scottish Chiefs, Part I..20 
Scottish Chiefs, Part II.20 

190. Willy Reilly.20 

191. The Nautz Family... ..20 

192. Great Expectations.20 

193. Hist.of Pendennis,Pt I. .20 
Hist.of Pendennis,Pt II 20 

194. Widow Bedott Papers ..20 

195. Daniel Deronda,Part I. .20 
Daniel Deronda, Part II.20 


196. AltioraPeto.20 

197. By the Gate of the Sea.. 15 

198. Tales of a Traveller.20 


199. Life and Voyages of Co¬ 

lumbus, 2 Parts, each. 20 

200. The Pilgrim’s Progress. .20 

201. MartinChuzzlewit,P’rt I.20 
Martin Chuzzlew-it, P’t II.20 

202. Theophrastus Such.10 

203. Disarmed.15 

204. Eugene Aram.20 

205. The Spanish Gypsy, &C.20 

206. Cast up by the Sea.20 

207. Mill on the Floss, Part 1 .15 
Mill on the Floss, P’t II. 15 

208. Brother Jacob, etc.10 

209. The Executor.20 

210. American Notes.15 

211. The Newcomes, Part I..20 
The Newcomes, Part 11 .20 

212. The Privateersman.20 

213. The Three Feathers....20 

214. Phantom Fortune.20 

215. The Red Eric.20 

216. Lady Silverdale’s Sweet¬ 

heart. 10 

217. The Four Macnicol’s. ..10 

218. Mr.PisistratusBrown,M.P.io 

219. Dombeyand Son,Part 1 .20 
Dombeyand Son,Part 11 .20 

220. Book of Snobs.10 

221. Fairy Tales, Illustrated. .20 

222. The Disowned...20 

223. Little Dorrit, Part 1 .20 

Little Dorrit, Part 11 .... 20 

224. Abbotsford and New- 

stead Abbey.10 

225. Oliver Goldsmith, Black 10 

226. The Fire Brigade.20 

227. Rifle and Hound in Cey¬ 
lon .20 

228. Our Mutual Friend, P’t 1 .20 
OurMutualFriend,P’t II.20 

229. Paris Sketches.15 

230. Belinda.20 

231. Nicholas Nickleby,P’t 1 .20 
NicholasNicklebv,P’t II.20 

232 . Monarch of Mincing 

Lane.20 

* 33 * Eight Years’ Wanderings 
in Ceylon. 20 

234. Pictures from Italy.15 

235. Adventures of Philip,Pt I.15 
Adventures of Philip, Pt II.x5 

236 . Knickerbocker History 

’ of New York.. 


237. The Boy at Mugby.10 

238. The Virginians, Part I..20 
The Virginians, Part 11 .20 

239. Erling the Bold.20 

240. Kenelm Chillingly.20 

241. Deep Down.20 

242. Samuel Brohl & Co.20 

243. Gautran.20 

244. Bleak House, Part I....20 
Bleak House, Part 11 ...20 

245. What Will He Do With 

It? 2 Parts,each.20 

246. Sketches ofYoungCouples. 10 

247. Devereux.20 

248. Life of Webster, Part 1 .15 
Life of Webster, Pt. II. 15 

249. The Crayon Papers.20 

250. The Caxtons, Part I-15 

The Caxtons, Part II... 15 

251. Autobiography of An¬ 

thony Trollope.20 

252. Critical Reviews, etc.... 10 

253. Lucretia.20 

254. Peter the Whaler.20 

255. Last of the Barons. Pt 1 .15 
Last of the Barons,Pt.II. 15 

256. Eastern Sketches.15 

257. All in a Garden Fair-20 

258. File No. 113.20 

259. The Parisians, Part I...20 
The Parisians, Part 11 ..20 

260. Mrs. Darling’s Letters.. .20 

261. Master Humphrey’s 

Clock.10 

262. Fatal Boots, etc.10 

263. The Alhambra.15 

264. The Four Georges.10 

265. Plutarch’s Lives, 5 Pts. Si. 

266. Under the Red Flag-10 

267. TheHaunted House, etc. xo 

268. When the Ship Comes 

Home. 10 

269. One False, both Fair....20 

270. The Mudfog Papers, etc. 10 

271. My Novel, 3 Parts, each.20 

272. Conquest of Granada. ..20 

273. Sketches by Boz.20 

274. A Christmas Carol, etc.. 15 

275. lone Stewart.20 

276. Harold, 2 Parts, each... 15 

277. Dora Thorne.20 

278. Maid of Athens...20 

279. Conquest of Spain.10 

280. Fitzboodle Papers, etc.. 10 

281. Bracebridge Hall.20 

282. Uncommercial Traveller.20 

283. Roundabout Papers.20 

284. Rossmoyne. 20 

285. A Legend of the Rhine, 

etc.J° 

286. Cox’s Diary, etc.10 

287. Beyond Pardon.20 

288. Somebody’sLuggage,etc. 10 

289. Godolphin.20 

290. Salmagundi.20 

291. Famous Funny Fellows.20 

292. Irish Sketches, etc.20 

293. The Battle of Life, etc... 10 

294. Pilgrims of the Rhine ...15 

295. Random Shots.20 

296. Men’s Wives.. ..10 

297. Mystery of Edwin Drood.20 


298. Reprinted Pieces.20 

299. Astoria.-...20 

300. Novels by Eminent Handsio 

301. Companions of Columbus2o 

302. No Thoroughfare.10 

303. Character Sketches, etc. 10 

304. Christmas Books.. ....20 

305. A Tour on the Prairies... 10 

306. Ballads. 15 

307. Yellowplush Papers.10 

308. Life of Mahomet, Part 1 .15 
Life of Mahomet, Pt. II. 15 

309. Sketches and Travels in 

London.. 

310. Oliver Goldsmith,Irving.20 

311. Captain Bonneville .... 20 

312. Golden Girls.20 

313. English Humorists.15 

314. Moorish Chronicles.. 

315. Winifred Power.20 

316. Great HoggartyDiamond 10 

317. Pausanias.15 

318. The New Abelard.20 

319. A Real Queen.....20 

320. The Rose and the Ring.20 

321. Wolfert’s Roost and Mis¬ 

cellanies, by Irving*• • • 10 

322. Mark Seaworth.20 

323. Life of Paul Jones.20 

324. Round the World.20 

325. Elbow Room.20 

326. The Wizard’s Son.25 

327. Harry Lorrequer.20 

328. How It All Came Round.20 

329. Dante Rosetti’s Poems. 20 

330. The Canon’s Ward.20 

331. Lucile, by O. Meredith. 20 

332. Every Day Cook Book.. 20 

333. Lays of Ancient Rome.. 20 

334. Life of Bums.20 

335. The Young Foresters.. .20 

336. John Bull andHis Island 20 

337. Salt Water, byKingston. 20 

338. The Midshipman.20 

339. Proctor's Poems.20 

340. Clayton’s Rangers.20 

341. Schiller’s Poems.• 20 

342. Goethe’s Faust.20 

343. Goethe’s Poems.20 

344. Life of Thackeray.10 

345. Dante’s Vision of Hell, 
Purgatory and Paradise.. 20 

346. An Interesting Case-20 

347. Life of Byron, Nichol... 10 

348. Life of Bunyan.n> 

349. Valerie’s Fate......10 

350. GrandfatherLickshingle.20 

351. Lays of the Scottish Ca¬ 

valiers.20 

352. Willis’ Poems.20 

353. Tales of the French Re¬ 

volution.15 

354. Loom and Lugger-..20 

355. More Leaves from a Life 

in the Highlands.15 

356. Hygiene of the Brain. ..25 

357. Berkeley the Banker-20 

358. Homes Abroad.15 

359. Scott’s Lady of the Lake, 

with notes.. 

360. Modem Christianity a 
civilized Heathenism. ...15 













































































































BEAUT AND NEEVE FOOD. 



Vitalized Phos-phites, 

COMPOSED OP THE NERVE-GIVING PRINCIPLES OP 
THE OX-BRAIN AND WHEAT-GERM. 

It restores the energy lost by Nervousness or Indigestion; relieves 
Lassitude and Neuralgia; refreshes the nerves tired by worry, excite¬ 
ment, or exoessive brain fatigue; strengthens a failing memory, and 

f lives renewed vigor in all diseases of Nervous Exhaustion or Debility, 
t is the only PREVENTIVE FOR CONSUMPTION. 

It aids wonderfully in the mental and bodily growth of infants and || 
children. Under its use the teeth come easier, the bones grow better, the skin 
plumper and smoother; the brain acquires more readily, and rests and sleeps 
more sweetly. An ill-fed brain learns no lessons, and is excusable if peevish. 

It gives a happier and better childhood. 

“It is with the utmost confidence that I recommend this excellent pre¬ 
paration for the relief of indigestion and for general debility; nay, I do more 
than recommend, 1 really urge all invalids to put it to the test, for in sev¬ 
eral cases personally known to me signal benefits have been derived from 
its use. I have recently watched its effects on a young friend who has 
suffered from indigestion all her life. After taking the Vitalized Phos¬ 
phites for a fortnight she said to me; ' I feel another person; it is a pleas 
ure to live.* Many hard-working men and women— especially those engaged 
in brain work—would be saved from the fatal resort to chloral and other 
destructive stimulant^ if they would have recourse to a remedy so simple 
and so efficacious.'* 


: H- 


Emily Faithfuls 


Physicians have prescribed over 600,000 Packages because they 
know its Composition, that it is not a secret remedy, and 

TH.MT THE FORMULA IS PRINTED ON EVERY LABEL 
For Sale bjr DruKgtott or by Mall, $i. 

F. CROSBY CO.,* 56 West 25th Street. 





































































































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Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: March 2009 


PreservationTechnologies 


A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 


Xv. 


Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 




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